


AFTERMATH: HACK

by reafterthought



Category: Yu-Gi-Oh! VRAINS
Genre: Alternate Timeline, Epilogue, Multiple Pov, Slow Burn, ensamble cast - Freeform, fanon theory, ffn challenge: diversity writing challenge, ffn challenge: epic masterclass challenge, ffn challenge: staying in a box challenge, ffn challenge: testing your patience challenge, word count: over 100000 words
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-02-21
Updated: 2021-02-22
Packaged: 2021-02-28 06:14:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 31
Words: 50,387
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22829290
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/reafterthought/pseuds/reafterthought
Summary: The Ignis are gone. Playmaker has vanished. They are left to pick up the pieces and move on - but moving on comes with its own challenges, particularly when children are brittle but have the greatest capacity of growth, and it was children who Ignis were modelled after.
Comments: 5
Kudos: 65
Collections: The DFC Challenge Collection





	1. The Spoils of Battle 1 - Rebuilding (Hayami)

**Author's Note:**

> Essentially, this story was born from that last scene of the series (ie. why is Ai/eye back in Yuusaku's duel disk and why do the creators leave us with that cruel cliffhanger?). A mix of epilogue and Ai's return throwing a wrench into things, as well as taking the chance to explore some character relationships and fanon theories/fill-in-the-gaps... In other words, a bit of a free for all though there is a plot and it is written down (and not on the back of patient notes, for once!).
> 
> Meant to start posting last week, but I was still on nights when I finished Ch 11 so I've wound up with 21 chapters backlogged instead... and just barely starting the second arc. Arc 1 is essentially epilogue, but it sets the scene (hopefully).
> 
> Written for  
> Epic Masterclass Challenge, 1 – canon goodness (ie. Fic does not contradict canon)  
> Staying in a Box Challenge, 11 – mixed POVs (word count range: chapters 1000-2499 words)  
> Testing Your Patience Challenge – 11 chapters   
> Diversity Writing Challenge, L20 - complete 100,000 from a multichap or series in two consecutive months that include the whole of/part of campnano or a nanowrimo (you can use a tail-end of nano if you're planning something else for nano)

They all know when the final battles end, because the unconscious wake up and Link VRAINS screeches to a grinding halt. Akira wakes up to Aoi and their household robot on either side of him. Emma wakes up to an empty house but an estranged brother at the door. Go wakes up to a pound of kids on his chest and a too small bed keeping him wedged in. The three knights of Hanoi wake up in a boat adrift with Pandora looking in on them.

And Hayami, who’d forgotten something, returns expecting to have to argue her way through security and finds them non-functional. She might have seen a shadow leaving as well. She might not have; she’s not quite sure. Still, she follows her instincts, her curiosity, her feet – she walks past the slumped Soltis only to find more and more… and finally, a mass-produced line of identical figures, all toppled like dominoes.

Only the one in the middle looks purposely arranged, hands clasped across the chest and cloak drawn up to cover his face as though he lay there dead. But he was also a Soltis, with the mark on his neck, and given Soltis had overrun both SOL technologies and Link VRAINS, what other human would be there in the middle of the night to do such a thing?

For a fleeting moment, she wonders if it’s Playmaker. But Playmaker hasn’t been since the incident with Bohman and what would make him show up, in guise, to SOL technologies?

She can’t prove anyone was here anyway, with the place in shambles in more ways than one. Instead she starts phoning people, heedless of the time, and most aren’t enthused to get things sorted in the middle of the night.

Eventually though, she collects a small assortment of people outside the opened doors of SOL Technologies. There are Akira, immaculate as ever in his blue suit but somehow more distant as well, and Aoi in a hastily thrown on top and skirt on his arm. There’s several women rubbing sleep out of their eyes, all in crinkled suits or casual dress, or males who’ve forgone such care and turned up in their pyjamas. Most her usual team is there. Some from the maintenance department. Some from the manufacturing line. No seniors aside from Akira, though. That’s purposeful, though she’ll deny it if anyone outside her usual team asks. She did ask the bounty hunters, though. There’s no Go, though, nor Blood Sheppard. There is Ghost Girl though, dressed in a purple one piece that hangs far more loosely

And, of course, there’s no-one to step on Akira’s toes. There’s no-one she trusts more to take the reins.

And he does, just like she expects him to. “What happened here, Hayami?” is the first question out of his mouth, unlike the others who are either silent and watching or grumbling at the interruption of their sleep.

“I left something here and didn’t realise until after I got home and unpacked my bags.” She isn’t going to tell him what she left; that’s too awkward but even silence on the matter can’t stop the flush creeping into her cheeks. “I was too wound up to leave it until morning so came to see if the security bots would let me in – or at least fetch it for me. Except they were all non-functional when I found them.”

The whispers break out again. Akira waves a hand and they silence, watching the movement. “Go on,” he says.

She does. “I went inside. I was curious, and the bots inside were all the same. And the manufacturing line was filled with identical looking bots and of course not one of them worked either. What was creepy though was one of them was arranged with hands over their chest and cloak over his eyes, almost as if he were dead. And there was someone – I think. I’m not really sure. They were out of sight before I could get a good look at them.”

Akira mumbles something that only Aoi seems to pick up, and she gives a small gasp at it. The rest of them are only privy to his other words. “No point checking the security cameras, I suppose.” He shakes his head. “Is this all you contacted, or did more not show up?”

“I contacted everyone I could get a hold of. Queen, of course, is in hospital still so I couldn’t get through.” That’s a lie. “And I didn’t think it was necessary to contact our shareholders in the middle of the night.”

“But you drag us out of bed,” someone mumbles, but another is already turning over a Soltis curiously.

Akira glances at the assembled mix of personell. “We’ll make do,” he says. “We’ll keep Link VRAINs closed for now and sort out security and the Soltis first. And let’s see if we can’t get a little more help as well.”

“Want me to go?” Aoi asks. She seems to understand better than the rest of them where that extra help may come from. Though Ghost Girl is nodding appreciatively as well, and her companion wears his usual stoic expression (and does that mean he isn’t fazed or he can just hide it that well?)

“It’s the middle of the night and you’re sixteen.” Akira frowns.

Ghost Girl laughs. “Oh, no-one needs to go. There are other ways to contact people. Just leave it to me.”

Akira nods and disentangles himself from his sister. She looks a little put out so Hayami interjects: “We need an awesome duellist here anyway. Kitigama’s duel robots are no match for you!”

Aoi laughs. Akira nods. “Not to mention our own duel traps… and if Ai added any of his own.” He frowns.

So did Hayami, who also frowns. Not many people here would know who Ai was. But Akira doesn’t expand. Instead, he starts delegating. A small group of people (namely, Aoi, Ghost Girl, her companion and someone from the maintenance team when Hayami pointed out none of the first three were employees of Sol Technologies) would physically comb the building, withdrawing the Soltis datachips as well as dismantling any traps they might stumble across. Meanwhile, the majority of security and maintenance personnel would comb through the digital infrastructure, prioritising clearance and maintenance based on necessity. Link VRAINS would remain cut off until it was cleaned and stabilised, but they could wait until tomorrow to announce that. Meanwhile, the last team would comb through the employee records and recent press, and organise an emergency press release for tomorrow.

And now that there is a plan, the group of people look more chirper, though a few request teas, coffees or snacks for an almost all-nighter.

“We’ll free the kitchens first, then,” Ghost Girl grins, “and if there’s nothing there, I’ll grab some stuff with the bike. That work?”

It works fine, apparently, even if it didn’t fit the bounty hunter image she normally portrays (and even though most employees probably didn’t know she was Ghost Girl either, or Aoi was Blue Angel and Blue Maiden). 

They split up. Some had thought to bring laptops so they access the network from there. The others start

Akira and the infiltration group hang back. So does Hayami, though she does it apprehensively. Does he want her to leave? Are they going to talk about secrets she can’t or shouldn’t understand? Though she’s been by his side the entire time: through the original VRAINs incident where she learnt Aoi’s identity, through the hunt for Playmaker (and if she ever meets him again, she’ll apologise for her overzealousness, she thinks, given how he saved Akira twice over) and the incident with Mirror VRAINS where she’d been in charge of security when Akira had been in Link VRAINs. And then, during the Sol Technologies hijacking incident, Akira had trusted her with his and Aoi’s lives on that aeroplane as well.

But Akira didn’t send her away. Nor did the others, though Ghost Girl’s companion did give her a calculating look. Instead, they knelt over a piece of paper, drawing a hasty map of the building and asking Hayami to point out the greatest concentration of Soltis. She does so, and puts a star on the place she’d found that one strange one.

“Think it’s the original?” Ghost Girl asks.

“Only Playmaker would know, I guess,” Aoi replies. “It had to have been him, or maybe Revolver but I doubt Revolver would have been that kind to Ai.”

“Revolver,” Hayami repeats. Perhaps she isn’t privy to as much as she’d thought. “He’s still at large? Oh, and the knight called Baira escaped from the maximum security prison as well…”

Surprisingly, Ghost Girl’s companion laughs. “Their security is a joke. Most of us standing here could break out without breaking a sweat.”

“Let’s hope we never need to try,” Akira says quietly. “But yes, the four Knights of Hanoi are still at large, as are Revolver. For now, though, consider them a private military company. They are monitoring the network for crimes as their atonement.”

“You’re too soft, Zaizen-sama.” But Hayami smiles because that’s one of the things she respects about him and, frankly, Queen can use a little more niceness to her. And this is Akira’s chance to build Sol Technologies into a kinder company… or at least lay the foundation before morning and reality checks come.

The others head into the building. Akira moves to head inside. “Come on.” He gestures at her. “We can contact the others once some of our infrastructure is clear to access.”

“Right.” She grins at him, then quickly covers up a yawn. She might have set this party up (or Playmaker or Revolver or whoever caused the Soltis to shut down) but it’s still going to be a long night.


	2. Swimming (Aoi)

Aoi is in a daze after Akira awakens. At first, she doesn't even notice; she's nodded off thinking about Akira and Ai and Playmaker and she can't help but wonder what the latter is doing now. He doesn't show up for school that day (and she can't judge him because neither did she) and Kusanagi at his little cart hasn't seen him either. And surely, despite what she and Revolver and Akira have said, he's still thinking he needs to be the one to stop Ai…

And then Akira's awake and stumbling into the kitchen more disarrayed than she's seen him in a long time, and the laughter that bubbles out of her is part amusement and not simply pure hysterics. Still, Akira takes it as hysterics and hugs her warmly. Their maid robot is powered down in the corner, it's sleep-mode button flashing on and off.

Hayami calls in the midst of that and they pull away from each other reluctantly, and they hurriedly dress and drive down to Sol Technologies. What greets them is a mix of employees recently fired by Ai, and a scatter of powered-down Soltis bots.

Does this mean Ai was defeated? Aoi wonders. It's hard to say when they have no definitive proof, when there's easily over a hundred Soltis lying in the production line who look like him and none of them active as far as Hayami knew. It's easier to say when she mentions one purposefully arranged and covered with a cloak, and easier still when she mentions a shadow she lost sight of along the way.

It's probably Playmaker, and Aoi wonders where he's gone now, and where he will go after all this. Will he return home, return to school, return to a façade of an every day life? Or maybe he's found some peace amongst all of this – and if it hadn't been Ai as the final boss, she would have said he had found that peace. But who knows, now. How knows why Ai did what he did the way he did. Who knew if scars from ten years ago would truly fade because she sees those scars in Miyu as well, and the strained way she forces a smile on her face every time they visit her. But Aoi will stand by her side anyway, just like Akira will always be on her side. She thinks Kusanagi and maybe Soulburner as well will also stand by Playmaker's side, but who knows if Playmaker will come back to them. Whether he'll say hello when they pass each other at school, whether he'll return to the duel room, whether he'll keep on working part time at Café Nagi and whether he'll ever return to Link VRAINS. She wonders if Emma and Go and Blood Sheppard will ever know his true identity as well.

She wonders, fleetingly, how a lone wolf like Playmaker collected so many allies, but maybe it's because they've all fought for peace in different ways and it's drawn them all together. And maybe that's why Ghost Girl and Blood Shephard are here as well, because if Hayami didn't contact them, perhaps Akira did. She doesn't see Go, though, and last she knew he was still employed by Sol Technologies. Maybe he'd some later. Maybe he wouldn't come at all.

Regardless, Akira organises the personnel they have, then heads with Hayami into the building. They follow, of course, because the whole reason they're functioning as a duel team is in case there are any traps around or the Soltis start up again. They pass only slumped robots at first, and Hayami sighs in relief.

She's gone through these halls before, so Aoi supposes it would be a relief to find they haven't activated in her brief absence.

They don't go to the production area. That can wait, even if all of them are burning with curiosity. They head to the central computer instead: the area most important to secure. Then the tea room, as Emma had pointed out half-jokingly. But Aoi remembers Playmaker telling about his time in captivity, how food had been their only driver when hope abandoned them, how they'd had to win duels for their food and starve and try again if they lost until they didn't. A group of grumpy employees probably doesn't rank on the same scale, but there's no denying they'll be happier and more efficient with access to sustenance.

But first they needed to be able to work, and that meant freeing the central computer. Though, the rate they're going, Aoi wonders if they'll wind up just marching right up to the computer.

Unfortunately, that's not the case, and maybe she's tempted fate by thinking otherwise. There are traps on the door to the server room, both Sol Technologies and Ai's. Duel puzzles, one after another, until Blood Sheppard punches the console and Emma starts flicking through her inventory of viruses to see if she has something that might break the endless loop while Aoi holds the fort because none of them want to find out what happens if they get a duel puzzle wrong.

Eventually, Emma finds something and the ghost fizzles out in the middle of activating his face down card (and unlike most duel puzzles she's come across in the past where every provided card is necessary, there've been a few dud face downs including a magic card that had triggered the ghost's own Aegis of Gaia and finished him off). Hayami sighs in relief. So does Aoi, but less noticeably. Blood Shephard simply shoves hard at the doors, and that's where they run into the second problem. The door remains locked, even despite Akira's priority pass and them breaking through the loop of duel puzzles.

Or maybe that's the problem, Aoi muses as she regards Emma's sheepish look. Maybe force is the wrong answer. But when shoving the door doesn't work, Blood Shephard pulls out a small computer and a few wires and sets about attempting to dismantle it.

"He's rewritten the entire code." Akira frowns at the screen. "If he's done this to all the security area… Not to mention there aren't that many people who can break Ignis code."

Luckily, Aoi thinks, Blood Shephard doesn't seem to be having too much trouble with the Ignis code.

"He replicated it well enough to trick Playmaker and Soulburner," Akira points out, when the panel flicks green. He gives the doors a push and they open.

There are more Soltis inside, one slumped over at the desk of every computer. Aoi stares at the façade of them in human work roles, but the Soltis look too much like humans and it's more frightening than bizarre to behold. Hayami, surprisingly, marches up to one and pushes it off, then jumps when it hits the floor. Perhaps it's her desk, or perhaps she's just walked up to one at random.

Akira climbs the stairs to his own desk. There's no Soltis in his seat, but maybe that's because the Soltis are artificial intelligence and don't need sub-leaders in the mix. Still, the computers are accessible once they clear out the Soltis… and then question then becomes: what are they going to do with all the Soltis?

They'll have to withdraw the data chips, of course, but Ai wasn't a data chip so how did he move? There's also the question of what to do with their physical bodies, especially now that they'd amassed several times their carrying capacity.

"Let's put them in the parking level," Akira says, finally. "We can use the trolleys we use to move computers and other hardware to help us."

"And then what?" Blood Shephard asks, scowling. Aoi doesn't think she's seen a smile from him still… or heard his real name, for that matter.

"Repurpose or dismantle them, I suppose." He shrugs. "Honestly, if they stay inactivated, then what do with them is pretty low on my priority list. Especially since we've all street-parked tonight anyway."

But lifting the limp Soltis is awkward work, even if they only have to carry them onto and off the trolleys. Aoi, being younger smaller than the others, winds up being slower as well but slowly they empty out the room. The data chips they leave in a pile on one of the desks for the maintenance staff to have a look at.

And once about half the desks are cleared, they fetch the others in and they start getting to work.

And Aoi and Emma leave them to it and start looking for the kitchens instead.


	3. Dreams (Go)

Go wakes up in bed instead of in the duel ring he’d entered VRAINS in, but he’s not surprised. He’d lost, after all, and he’d lost to Ai who had every reason to seek his revenge on him. Still, the children haven’t lost faith in him and they’re in a ring around his bed when he awakes.

It’s not until a little while later that he realises it’s long past their bedtime, but who is he to scold them? He’s the one who should be scolded instead, he thinks, for putting lust for power in front of the dreams of these children. In front of his own dreams, as well, and his own honour, and he had nothing to show for it in the end except a week in hospital and long hours of counselling sessions to remove an AI from his brain.

But the kids don’t seem to care because they shower him with snacks and water and then climb right into bed with him.

And he’s lucky his bed here at the orphanage is big enough to fit them all in. And while someone really should tell the matron and his manager, nobody does. Instead, the children nod off to sleep one by one and Go finds himself nodding off along with them.

He doesn’t hear his phone ring. It doesn’t ring in his dreams. He does, however, hear something else: a voice he’d only briefly heard before.

“I wanted to protect her.”

He blinks. He sees nothing either way. But that voice… There’s something familiar about that voice. He simply can’t put his finger on it.

“I wanted to, but I lost her.”

He tries taking a step forward. He moves, though it’s hard to know if that’s progress because he doesn’t feel anything beneath his feet to be walking upon. He’s adrift and who knows if there’s any progress to be made by drifting.

“I lost to you, and I lost her.”

And, finally, he understands. What his lust for power had destroyed, what had nearly destroyed him in the aftermath. “Earth,” he says, and the name vibrates in his skull. “The Earth Ignis.”

“Earth,” the voice replied. “Earth, yes. Steadfast, a sticker for the rules they called me. But I just wanted to protect our peace.”

“Peace,” Go repeats. “That’s a good word for it.”

“You didn’t want to destroy peace,” the Earth Ignis continued. “You wanted power, yes, but there are numerous other ways to gain power. They might have made you happier.”

“Your wisdom is a little late.” A short laugh bubbles from his lips. “But true. I wanted to beat Playmaker so much I threw away what was most important to me.”

“I couldn’t,” the Earth Ignis said. “I couldn’t turn away from Aqua, even if I couldn’t defeat you. But just losing to you would have been okay, because your intentions ended there. I think my partner would have been the same way, and that’s why I never sought him. But that company was different. That company ripped me apart and that’s when I learnt true hatred.”

He’d known. After all, after they’d dissected the Earth Ignis’ data they’d implanted it into him.

“That’s when I betrayed Aqua.”

And that was a surprise. “Betrayed?” Go echoes. “How did you betray her?” He doesn’t remember seeing her after Earth helped her escape, though he heard a freelance bounty hunter picked her up. Whoever it was wasn’t aligned with Sol Technologies though, and at least that had spared her the same fate as Earth.

“Aqua sided with the humans,” the Earth Ignis explains, and floating in space isn’t the most comfortable place for a story but Go settles in to listen anyway. “She wanted to support them, to save them. And I didn’t understand it at first, because Aqua didn’t say. She wanted me to find my own way. So I tried. I sought out my partner first, but he works for the Knights of Hanoi.”

“Spectre,” Go replies, because he heard about that from Akira, that he’d also been involved in the Lost Incident. Playmaker, Spectre, Soulburner, and that girl in the hospital. There were two others as well, and he wonders if fate has drawn them into this conflict as well or if they’ve remained free of its tangling threads. And him… why is he involved in the presence when he has no past ties linking him in? Blue Angel has now been explained. Spectre and the Knights of Hanoi have been explained. Playmaker has been explained. But Playmaker’s mysterious helper… That’s another unexplained thread. How does he relate? That person who’d opened up a door to Sol Technologies’ tunnel. The voice that had directed him to Revolver. Is he another person whose life was warped?

“Our lives were created to be warped,” the Earth Ignis says sadly. “Yes, the children suffered but an existence that is born only to be manipulated is also a form of malice.”

“I never thought about it,” Go admits. “From the beginning the Ignis were just things people with power seemed to want. Hanoi, Sol Technologies… and even Playmaker, I guess.”

“Playmaker is an interesting human,” the Earth Ignis agrees. “But you never defeated him, in the end. What made you change?”

“Another loss.” It was Soulburner, again Soulburner. “Even the ultimate level of processing I’d obtained hadn’t been enough, and I’d lost my duelling soul in the process. My soul… and all the things I’d duelled for as well. I’d lost the meaning of my existence.”

“You’ve found it now,” the Earth Ignis says. “Do you feel any different than you did before?”

Go hums. “Peace,” he says. “I feel more at peace, now. Even though I lost to Ai, and maybe I didn’t accomplish anything at all in that duel. But I fought for what I believed in, for the people who believed in me.”

“But you didn’t redeem yourself,” the Earth Ignis pointed out. “Didn’t you also say that was a form of your redemption?”

“That’s true,” he agrees. “I didn’t win, and who knows if I was even of any help. But it’s not the end of the road yet. I still have the children, and my deck, even if me waking up must mean Ai’s defeat.”

“Ai supported humans as much as Aqua,” Earth laments. “I wonder what he was thinking.”

Go wonders too, but perhaps only Playmaker knows, if anyone.

But what he does now is this: he’s done the Earth Ignis a great disservice, now matter how the other tries to dress it up. “I’m sorry.”

“You were just the catalyst,” the Earth Ignis replies. “But I am also sorry, for the damage your psyche sustained.”

“That was my own arrogance,” Go counters, “but thank you all the same. I’m much better now, though. I was even able to duel like my old self, though I’ve still got a ways to go to forge my own path.”

“And that’s what makes humans worth fighting for, I think,” the Earth Ignis says. “You’re able to forge paths where none exist, unlike us Ignis who are bound by possibilities. But the fight is over. What are you going to do now?”

He thinks about that. He still has the orphanage, and the kids. He still has his duelling, and his Gouki cards. He still has Charisma duelling. And he might still have a contract with Sol Technologies. He’ll have to look into that.

“Bounty hunting wasn’t for me,” he says finally. “I was only ever after one thing and it was the wrong thing.”

“Maybe it’s not wrong,” Earth muses. “It’s not wrong to want to be stronger. It just depends on how you go about it. Just like it isn’t wrong that you want to defeat someone, but whether it’s friendly rivalry or full blown enmity is where the difference is.”

“You’re right,” Go agrees, “but either way, I’m not cut out for that. I’ll return to the stage that was meant for me, and get stronger in my own way.”

“You do that,” the Earth Ignis replies. “But it’s too late for me.”

“You can’t find Aqua?” he asks, perhaps untactfully but he has no way of knowing except to ask.

“The Ignis are all defeated,” Earth replies. “Even Ai.”

That had to be the case, he thinks, for those defeated by Ai like himself to wake up. It was like that with Revolver, as well. He doesn’t know how long he’s been out for this time though.

“But then why are you here?” Go asks. “In my dreams?”

“Your dreams…” The Earth Ignis suddenly appears: a small figure, looking up at him from between his hands. “I don’t know. Maybe you had something to say to me.”

“Sorry,” Go says, because that’s the only thing he thinks he wanted to say.

The Earth Ignis shrugs. “Or maybe I’m the one who had something to say to you. I don’t know, and it seems neither do you.”

And then the Ignis was gone, appearance and voice, and Go tumbled into the void until one of the tossing children elbowed him in the ribs and woke him.


	4. All-Nighter (Akira)

After having slept through the last few days, Akira supposes an all-nighter is expected. He’s lucky Hayami had forgotten something, that she’d discovered the deactivated Soltis, that she’d called enough personnel to get things started but none of the other higher-ups that would have thrown their own agendas into the mix.

Though, knowing Hayami, that last one was on purpose. This time, though, Akira can’t bring himself to mind. Sol Technologies has done too many things he’s ashamed of, too many things that sully the company’s name when it doesn’t need to. If she’s going to take advantage of this mess by handing him full and conditioning reins until morning, then he’s going to make as best use of that as he can manage.

Unfortunately, they wasted a good half hour on the door, and another clearing out the control room. And then they had to battle with the software, where Ai had left another few surprises for them, while other essential areas were slowly emptied of Soltis. But they were making progress, finally, and Aoi, Emma and Kengo were clearing out the mail room, where hopefully Ai had followed protocol and left the terminated contracts.

And given that it was only a few days since then, it shouldn’t be too complicated a matter to re-instate them.

“Ni-san?” Aoi taps him on the shoulder and he abandons his screen for a moment to look at her. “The employee records aren’t in the mail room.”

Akira sighs. “Too much to hope for, wasn’t it. Have you tried the archives?”

“Not yet. There’s a ridiculous number of Soltis everywhere. I wonder if Ai was trying to compensate for his loneliness.” She frowns at the thought. “Ai was missing the other Ignis, but a hive mind doesn’t really do anything for that.”

“But Ai is an artificial intelligence.” Akira pats her on the shoulder. “He mightn’t have understood the difference, at least at first.”

But when Aoi goes off to explore the archives, Akira wonders: was this all because Ai had been lonely? Because he’d lost all the other Ignis? But Ai was the one who’d abandoned Playmaker, in the end. Had he blamed Playmaker, like he blamed Aoi and Go, for the loss of his fellow Ignis? But something about that doesn’t ring quite true either, and probably only Playmaker can shed any light on it.

Playmaker might even know more about the traps Ai has implanted. He’d at least know the circumstances of Ai’s defeat. And tracking down his contact details, now that he had the name, wouldn’t be much of a problem for him.

He feels a little guilty, regardless. He’s invaded the privacy of many people throughout the years, both in his capacity as a hacker and bounty hunter, and later as an employee of Sol Technologies. But this is different. This is callous, to ask about Ai when the defeat is still so raw. But at least that way they’ll know: they’ll have confirmation that it’s not just a glitch in the system and the hundreds of Soltis in the parking level aren’t going to reactivate and storm the building, or worse.

But Playmaker doesn’t pick up. The mobile rings until it cuts out.

Akira thinks, then sends an email instead. An email is more tactful anyway, and even if the other doesn’t reply he’ll at least know it’s been read. But that won’t give him any answers tonight, and judging from the slow progress the security team is making, it’ll be days before they have some semblance of a digital infrastructure back.

They’ve worked out a good system, at least. Hayami is overseeing them and the two bounty hunters that had tagged along with Go Onizuka are assisting with any duel traps the non-duellists run into. The group working to decode the Soltis chips are still on personal computers as a precaution, and it’s slow going for them. Akira’s own fingers itch to help, but he has another responsibility right now, he knows. And once Ema and Kengo cleared out the building, they can help here as well.

Hopefully this won’t wind up kicking them all in the back.

He goes through his mental checklist again. The Soltis are slowly being dechipped and moved out of the building. The building itself is slowly being cleared of traps. The digital infrastructure, likewise, is being carefully combed and cleared of traps and once that’s done, they can use the physical backups to restore it. Aoi and the others are still looking for the employee files, and once he has them he can work at reorganising them. And then there are the chips themselves, which can provide them with information and confirmation they sorely need. And then outside perceptions: public and their shareholders, which will need to be addressed.

The kings haven’t been too thrilled with him since Playmaker’s advent, and he doesn’t think that’s going to change now. However they’ve let him sit in a position of power and they haven’t withdrawn their funding yet, which mean they’re not entirely adverse to his way of running things, so long as there’s a profit to be seen. And that’s the tricky part; they won’t be able to open Link VRAINS for a while which means their other commodities, like the Soltis, are coins they can cash. Luckily there hadn’t been any in the community before the crash. They were just on Sol Technologies related places, like the cruise where Queen had been ambushed. But the release date was next week, if he recalled, and there’d be trouble if they weren’t able to roll out by then.

Which meant confirming the Soltis were no longer controlled by Ai and had no residual programmes, and then reprogramming them to the garden variety or specifications requested from their buyers. And that was after confirming none of that data had been altered.

Akira sighs. Emma taps him on the shoulder this time, with a cup of coffee in hand. “You’re thinking pretty hard, there.”

“Trying to save face,” Akira admits. “The Soltis were due to roll out next week.”

“Ah.” She shrugs. “You lot have your work cut out for you then, considering the number of empty shells that need sorting out and adjusting. Not to mention dealing with the bad press from Ai’s takeover.”

“Right.” It hadn’t been made formally public, but that didn’t matter with social media and hundreds of disgruntled employees and their audible (if justifiable) complaints. Another reason he needed the employee records. And the company’s bank statement as well, given not all of them would be coming back quietly and without a fuss. Not to mention they’d wasted resources on unnecessary evils like combining human and artificial intelligence minds, when they could have been better focused on cyber security.

In all fairness though, they couldn’t expect everyone to be able to handle Ignis algorithms. Even if that is essentially what he’s asking them to do now.

He drains the tea. It’s warm but not scalding, and no sugar just as he likes it. “Thank you,” he says gratefully.

“And another present,” Emma grins, before handing him a box.

He peeks inside. “The employee records?”

“In the archives after all.” She shrugs. “Don’t look like they’ve been tampered to me, at all. Looks like all Ai did was chase everyone out the building.”

“So their contracts hadn’t been severed.” Akira hums, then tries to log into his own employee account as an experiment. He can’t; he’s bounced back by another bug. He tries logging into the banking accounts. No luck.

“Looks like you’ve found a little side-project.” Emma waves a hand and sets off. “I better get back and lend Aoi and Ni-san a hand.”

Akira waves her off, and sets about attempting to dismantle the latest bug. This one will be a quicker project than dismantling the chips, especially since the others have already set the precinct (and it might have been quickened by him sharing Kengo’s algorithm for breaking the lock, but what did it matter? AI weren’t the only ones to learn from experience after all.) And once he’s in to the employee accounts, he confirms his suspicions. Ai did literally chase the people out of the building but did nothing to the legal side of things. Their pay continued. Their contracts continued. There was simply an allotment of indefinite paid leave days that was quickly reversed.

While he was there, he put in overtime rates for the people who’d collected here tonight as well.

And that was a relatively simple problem to solve. The question now was what to do with the rest, who Hayami either didn’t or couldn’t contact.

He goes through them one by one, separating into three piles. The one in the middle wound up the biggest in the end, because even if he was a shared Head of Sol Technologies, he didn’t know every employee back to front.


	5. Silence (Takeru)

Takeru goes to see Kusanagi in the afternoon, but Playmaker’s absence is not unexpected. Kusanagi doesn’t know where he’d be either… and maybe that’s the point. Or maybe that’s only showing them how little they know of Yuusaku outside of his Playmaker role. And didn’t Kusanagi himself say it once: the world needed him to be Playmaker, and Yuusaku otherwise was so unassuming that only Naoki paid any special attention to him.

What was with that, anyway? Yuusaku’s accounts of Naoki were unimpressed at best, but one thing that he did have going for him was persistence. Granted, it was that persistence coupled with his devout worship of Playmaker that got him into strife with Faust in the first place. And it was a wonder he wasn’t better at duelling, considering his enthusiasm with the Duel Club.

Takeru shook his head. Why is he even thinking about that, now? His little apartment is cold and dark and who knows where Playmaker is now. He can guess, though. Readying himself for the final confrontation, or at Sol Technologies. He toys with the ides of staking out the place, as he has all evening, but in the end he gave that letter to Playmaker, didn’t he? Gave it to Playmaker knowing full well it was his battle to fight, and it would be too raw or painful for anyone else to be looking in.

That was why Revolver left almost immediately after their duel. That was why Soulburner had only lingered enough to see Playmaker’s expression, before he’d left as well. Why Takeru was pacing in his apartment while his friend could be in the duel of his life –

And, honestly, he sort of understood where Ai was coming from. Ai who’d lost his fellow Ignis to the cruelty of humanity had every right to lash out at the world. But why lash out at Playmaker? Hadn’t Playmaker kept Ai safe all this time? Hadn’t Playmaker saved the world twice over along with Ai? Weren’t they precious partners, born from one another’s existence and pain?

Takeru can’t imagine Flame turning on him even if he burnt the rest of the world.

But Ai is the Ignis of darkness and maybe there’s something twisted in that, just like there was something twisted in light. But doesn’t that mean Yuusaku has something twisted in him as well?

Or maybe he’s only darkness because he’s essentially the dark knight of VRAINS?

He groans, slaps a wall and resumes his pacing. He’s thinking himself in circles and logical thinking has never been his strong suit. Circles are, though. His Salamangreat deck works so well because of that – though he does find it ironic most fire decks resort to quite a bit of loop-combos and card recycling, for all that fiery personalities prefer a straight up fist fight. But Lightning’s deck was full of tricky loops as well. And Blue Maiden’s ability to recycle her Marincess cards is second to none, even if Go Onizuka’s old deck was on par with the Tricksters.

And Playmaker… no-one can grasp Playmaker’s deck, even Playmaker himself. Part of that is probably the fact that it’s constantly growing with Storm Access, but Takeru thinks there’s something more to it. Something none of them have worked out yet. Kusanagi told him the story of their meeting, of Playmaker obtaining that Cyverse deck, how his initial deck had no archetype nor attribute focus either but seemed to hold its own every time.

Maybe it didn’t have anything to do with its origins after all, but Ai had been loose in the network for five years before meeting Playmaker.

Ah, well. If anyone’s going to work it out, it’ll be Yuusaku or Kusanagi, he thinks.

And maybe he should have just stayed at Café Nagi tonight instead of gone home. He’s going stir crazy and thinking about unnecessary things.

He plops onto his couch and sighs. He won’t even know when the battle takes place, or when it’s over. Unless Kusanagi finds out first and tells him.

He jumps when the phone rings right at that moment. It’s not Kusanagi on the phone, though. It’s Kiku.

Still, she’s a welcome distraction. They talk about everything and nothing. He asks about his grandparents. They’re doing fine, if a little disappointed he didn’t wind up coming back right yet after all. She asks about school. He says he’s still going every day like he promised, even if his company’s skipping.

She laughs, then asks about said company. Takeru wonders what he can say about Yuusaku and in the end can’t say very much at all. Kiku seems to get a good picture of him, though. Asks when he’s going to bring him to visit. Asks when he’s going to come back home.

“Soon,” he says, and he’s not sure if that’s an answer to the first question but it’s definitely an answer to the second. “Things are almost done here.”

“Okay,” Kiku replies – sweet, understanding Kiku. “Fight hard, Takeru.”

“I will,” he promises, even though he’s not fighting right now. Maybe his fight’s already over. Maybe he should have told Kiku about Revolver, about that duel. But he’s missed his chance now; Kiku’s said goodbye and hung up and Takeru only has dial tone to listen to.

Or he can ring back. He doesn’t. He drops the phone instead. He’ll see Kiku soon, anyway. As difficult as it will be for Playmaker, Takeru doesn’t think he’ll lose.

Playmaker, on record, has never lost.

And what a heavy cloak that is to wear, he thinks. How does Yuusaku do it? A double life is hard enough but Playmaker’s existence is so much more. He’s a beacon of hope for VRAINS. He’s someone the ordinary have placed on a pedestal that Sol Technologies have chased with dogs and laser guns because they’re just that scared. He’s someone who’s had to defend his privacy with an iron clad door to prevent people from stripping him bare, and he’s someone who’s had to fight through distrust and rejection to save them all anyway with nothing to show for it but fame.

They’ve turned him into a character: a rags to riches, an underdog to hero tale. They’ve turned him into a deity, almost: something surpassing the ordinary humans and what will happen if Playmaker does one day lose, he wonders? Will Playmaker ever be able to have fun in Link VRAINS? Will he ever be able to duel without the world or something else valuable on the line?

This probably isn’t the day to be thinking such things, he realises with a groan, even if he doesn’t believe in jinxes.

Then his phone rings and he almost leaps out of his skin a second time.

He really needs to stop thinking about these things, and least of all now when he’s already wound up so tight. He should have stayed at Café Nagi, he thinks. Or gone on a jog or to the gym. He should have gotten a 24/7 pass, but those things cost more than he wants to ask from his grandparents and the school doesn’t allow part-time jobs.

Speaking of, he wonders how Yuusaku manages it: living alone.

The phone dials out, then rings again.

Whoops. Takeru looks at it. This time it is Kusanagi and he pushes the button with more gusto than he intends. “Looks like Ai’s been defeated,” Kusanagi says without preamble. “Zaizen just called. There’s a bunch of unconscious Soltis at Sol Technologies at present.”

“Zaizen,” Takeru repeats, because he wasn’t expecting Zaizen to be there in the middle of the night anyway… but despite that, where is Playmaker? “Yuusaku didn’t say anything?”

“No. I can’t get through on his phone either.”

Even if he didn’t have his phone, he’d have his duel disk. He couldn’t have duelled Ai without it. Takeru tries calling too. It rings out.

“I suppose he doesn’t want to talk.” But Kusanagi sounds sad when he says it. “It’s my fault anyway. He’s like a little brother to me, but Jin always came first and that meant Yuusaku couldn’t rely on me.”

“I remember,” says Takeru, because he does. He remembered screaming until he could taste blood on his throat when he’d seen what Lightning’s machinations had done to the pair of them. “But I don’t think Yuusaku holds that against you.”

“Of course he doesn’t.” And now Kusanagi is exasperated. “But that’s not the same thing as being able to unconditionally depend on something.”

And that, Takeru realises, is hitting the nail on the end. Yuusaku has no-one like that. Takeru has Kiku and his grandparents. Kusanagi has his little brother. Go has the children from the orphanage, even if that’s not the same as being able to talk to someone a bit older about things. Zaizen Aoi has her brother, and Revovler has his knights. But Yuusaku, Yuusaku had Roboppi and Ai and they’re both gone, and did he even bare himself to them?

Where are Yuusaku’s parents? Takeru wonders. He’s never mentioned them, one way or another. But again, that’s just another thing he doesn’t know about Yuusaku, and if he wants to be alone in the aftermath, he’s not even sure where he would have gone.

“I’ll swing by his place in the morning,” Kusanagi continues. “Let me know if he shows up at school, but I doubt he will.”

Takeru doubts it as well, but that just leaves the whole of Den City to search.

He doesn’t search, though. Yuusaku clearly wants to be alone, and the fight’s over and done with now. They only have the aftermath.

Still, it’s not over until they’ve said their goodbyes, at least. They’re comrades in arms and friends after all.


	6. Brother (Shoichi)

Shoichi half expects Yuusaku to show up as normal, but he doesn’t. And then he hears from Takeru the other has skipped school as well and wonders why he’s surprised to begin with. Ai is closer to Yuusaku than Shoichi is, than Takeru is, than anyone they know (except perhaps Roboppi) is and who does that leave for Yuusaku?

Takeru doesn’t stay long, either. Shoichi can’t blame him either, and even though he keeps Café Nagi open in the courtyard all night, he knows he’s probably waiting for nothing. They’ve come to the end of this long sad tale but the one with the saddest epilogue will be Yuusaku. Jin, thankfully, has been kept out of things this time around and if Ai loses and perishes, then that’ll be the end of the Ignis and all the nightmares and conflict they’d brought along.

He knows it’s not Ai’s fault. He actually likes Ai – or liked him before the latest mess. But it was Kogami who kidnapped six children to make Ignis and Lightning who drove Jin into a ten year long catatonia. It was capturing Ai that led them neck deep into trouble, even though they’d gotten the truth and new allies as well. And it was Lightning, again, who’d putted two allies against each other… and if that had never happened, Kusanagi would have been proud to call Yuusaku his brother: a brother in everything but blood. But after fighting him, after asking him to fight because he couldn’t not do it for Jin, what right did he have to call Yuusaku family as well? After all, it was family that had divided them at that moment. Family that had proven blood prevailed.

But Yuusaku’s imposed his own exile. He bonded with Shoichi simply to find the truth to the Lost Incident, and wound up hailed as an emissary of justice instead. His desire for truth led him to save Link VRAINS, and everyone but Yuusaku himself would argue it was because he was a good person with a hero complex as well. Still, he’s saved VRAINS again and now he’s marching off to face his partner since the start of it all, to draw a full circle that shouldn’t have had to be drawn this way.

Or maybe it did have to be drawn this way, if only so they could be forever rid of the Ignis. Maybe Ai is a necessary casualty, because despite what they owe him, he’s also the instigator, the reason VRAINS was threatened to begin with, and he’s the culmination of Yuusaku’s torture.

But though all of them will find their peace, what about Yuusaku who has to fight Ai now? What will his peace look like?

Shoichi remembers the teenager who had stood before him with slate eyes in VRAINS, whose scoldings were delivered in the same tone as his challenges. He remembers the teenager who’d ordered a hot dog so casually and turned away that Shoichi hadn’t been able to differentiate him from any other customer before he’d been thanked. He remembered how calmly the other boy had broken rules and laws and hacked his way into Sol Technologies more than once, and even into the FBI database without finding the information they were looking for. And he remembers how, ever so slowly, emotions and bonds began to leak through – and what will happen now, to those bonds?

He’ll watch over him anyway, as long as he can. That’s what he decided. That’s what he owes.

He finds the cameras. Not Sol Technologies – those are locked far more tightly behind Ignis code – but ones on the street. He sees the Soltis standing, silently. Sees Yuusaku arrive and pass silently past them. See the Soltis suddenly topple over, as if their strings had been cut. Sees Yuusaku again, a little while later, leaving. Then sees someone in a suit go in, then come out moments later making frantic phone calls.

All the while, he works at hacking into Sol Technologies’ cameras and gets nowhere fast. Ai’s codes are just too long winded. Unnecessarily longwinded, one would think, except

Then people begin to collect and Shoichi knows it’s the beginning of the end. Ai must have been defeated. The employees of Sol Technologies are gathering to pick up the pieces, even in the middle of the night. But where has Yuusaku gone? Will he want company? Or does he just want to be alone?

He calls Yuusaku’s phone, knowing the other has his duel disk at least. But there’s no reply, and no message either. Though that tells him little; Yuusaku isn’t in the habit of sending messages, or setting one for when others miss him by phone. He isn’t one for phone calls either, but he’s always picked up for Kusanagi. Always showed up at the door to Café Nagi when called.

But what excuse does Shoichi have to call him with, this time?

He ponders. In the end, he sends a short but sweet: “coffee in the house if you’re in the mood.”

And then he calls Takeru, because he can just picture the other teenager climbing the walls of his cramped little apartment in anticipation.

And Takeru tries calling Yuusaku as well, with the same reply.

But if Yuusaku doesn’t want to talk to Shoichi, he doesn’t think he’ll want to talk to Takeru either. They’ve known each other longer. Their bond is deeper. Their bond is crueller, even, one could say. Soulburner had the honour of fighting for their bond but it was Shoichi who’d pulled at it like a rubber band, praying that even if it snapped, the longer half went to Playmaker.

He’d heard the full story afterwards. No-one can plan for betrayal, he thinks, and of course he’d overestimated Yuusaku… or underestimated him. Was it because he didn’t think Yuusaku was capable of such raw heartbreak or was he putting Playmaker onto the same pedestal the rest of Link VRAINS had done? Both, he thinks. And he hadn’t seen anything much different but that was because Ai had disappeared, and come back, and Yuusaku’s poker face hadn’t really changed over the years.

He only wore it less often, for a time in between.

But now what? Shoichi pours himself a cup of coffee. There are a few people milling in the courtyard and he keeps them well caffeinated and fed. But there’s no Yuusaku yet. No Revolver either and he doesn’t really expect Revolver but one never knows. There’s no Takeru either… and he wonders if they’ll see him again, either, because there’s nothing holding Takeru here anymore and he’d already made plans to go back to his hometown once before.

On the screen, a small group breaks away – Akira and Zaizen Aoi, the woman who’d called everyone there, and Ghost Girl and Blood Shepphard. A little while later, the others file into the building.

And then there’s nothing to see. Nothing to do but to break into Sol Technologies.

Several hours later, he manages it. And there’s been a bit of help from other side as well and he assumes that means Sol Technologies is trying to claim their digital infrastructure back. Still, their machinations gives him a back door, and as a reward he sends them what he’s managed to translate from Ai’s codes. That’ll speed things up a little, he thinks, but he also wonders why he can’t see a trace of Ghost Girl or Blood Shephard. The two are formidable hackers after all. Unless there are other traps as well. How completely had Ai rewritten Sol Technologies?

Or maybe they’re simply focusing on the Soltis instead. Who knows right now.

He looks through his newfound back door, instead. Tapping into the security feeds is much easier now, and he sees most of the staff in the security office, and Zaizen Akira and that other woman as well. He can’t see Blue Maiden, though. Or Ghost Girl or Blood Shephard.

And then he finds them. They seem to be cracking through locks on rooms, one by one, and emptying it of traps and Soltis. Some of the locks are straightforward: an endless loop of duelling puzzles. Others seem reminiscent of the dungeon he and Yuusaku had once been to, where they’d won the Cyverse deck. All of them were messy and long-winded bits of code that needed at least two people – and sometimes all three – to dismantle, even with their arsenal of pre-prepped programmes handy.

He wonders if Zaizen Akira will ask for help again. He doesn’t think so; this is for the company, after all, not for him. He’s impressed he’d asked in the first place. Impressed they’d all been able to fight together, for that, including Revolver. Impressed, again, that Revolver and Takeru had been able to settle their differences… and he wonders, one day, if Jin will be able to do that as well.

Or maybe it’s better to just put the whole thing behind them, now. The Ignis are forever gone and it’s the beginning of the rest of their lives. What that will mean for Yuusaku though, he doesn’t know.


	7. Women (Kengo)

“Whew, what a mess,” Emma says, as the find another closed door.

It’s a wonder Hayami had gotten in and out without any issues, but then again she’d gone straight towards her office, seen the manufacturing line from overhead, and returned. But all of Ai’s traps are getting rather tedious, and he’s getting closer and closer to allow Emma her silly idea of teaching Zaizen’s little sister how to hack.

He wonders how that’ll go over with the protective big brother… but then again, he’d first met Aoi and Emma in tandem against him so he must have had some idea even then. And he’d first met Zaizen Akira long before that, back when he’d been keeping tabs on Emma out of a sense of morbid curiosity and found her hacking and a bounty hunter.

He knows what drove Akira into hacking. What led him into the dangerous world of bounty hunting and then, about five years later, right back out. He’d covered his tracks well, though. Worked an extra couple of years and made a tidy cushion for the both of them. And Sol Technologies didn’t manage to dig up his sordid past, and his connections with still-active bounty hunters like Emma had allowed him access to information that let him rise through the ranks.

He doesn’t know what drove Emma into it, though. She’s good at digging up information, good at altering programmes and making viruses and swindling others but she’s not ruthless enough to survive without getting burnt. She’s managed fine until it comes it direct confrontations and he’s seen that as well, seen how she won’t escape escapable situations because there’s something more precious she’s protecting. And not everyone’s like him who didn’t have anything to protect, but the question still remains: what drove her to become a bounty hunter in the first place?

“What is it?” Zaizen Aoi asks. Emma is fiddling around with latest trap and Aoi has stopped next to him instead of her.

“Another trap,” Kengo replies. He thinks that’s rather obvious and Aoi, so far, hasn’t struck him as a dim-witted girl.

“Not that. You just looked like you were hesitating about something.”

“Hesitating.” He tugged his scarf – Oh, that probably gave it away, didn’t it? “It’s nothing.”

“It’s not nothing.” But she doesn’t ask again what it is. “You should talk, though.”

“To a stranger?” She doesn’t appear insulted, at least. “No thanks.”

“That’s fine.” She shrugged. “I meant to the person you’re thinking about.” She pauses, then asks: “Emma?”

She’s a sharp-eyed girl. He barely registered his own eyes flickering to his sister and then back again.

And Emma’s been treating her like her little protégé. Maybe she does know the answer. “Why did Emma become a bounty hunter?”

“I don’t know,” Aoi replies. “I think it stopped being the reason she continued a while ago.”

That’s astute, but it doesn’t tell him much.

“I was Blue Angel because I wanted my brother’s acknowledgement.”

He hasn’t asked for her backstory either. But at least it sounds like it’ll be a short one.

“Even when he acknowledged me, I continued being an idol in Link VRAINS because I’d found a different reason to fight, and to be a public figure. Because I’d made a difference to people, and because I wanted to become stronger in myself.”

“So you’re saying Emma became a bounty hunter to look for something, found it but kept on going because she’d found another reason?” But there are as many people who’d burn a bounty hunter as appreciate them. “Don’t tell me she has a crush on your brother.”

“They just work well together,” Aoi shrugs. “Not that I’d mind Emma as a sister in law, but I don’t see wedding bells in their future. They’re close, but they’ve still got walls up and until big brother can change Sol Technologies into the company he dreams of, there isn’t going to be a way to tear it down.”

“Unless that way is a splinter called Zaizen Aoi,” says Kengo thoughtfully.

“I know he was demoted once because of me,” she replies steadily, “but that’s what it means to fight for oneself: to be selfish, to accept there are risks to others as well but they’re worth the cost. And it was worth big brother working a few less hours and getting paid a few hundred less yen if it meant I could protect myself when he’s not around and protect him as well instead of just being the one protected. But I failed again, with Ai. And I failed to defend Aqua from Bohman.”

“You don’t sound upset,” Kengo remarks, ignoring Emma’s choice words as her virus bomb fails. She hasn’t managed to trigger the sequence yet, and until she does there isn’t much for a second person to do.

“Of course I’m upset,” she shrugs, “but I can’t compare myself to other people. I can’t begrudge Playmaker for having saved me so many times over. I can’t begrudge Ai for being the sole survivor to a massacre. I can’t begrudge Soulburner who defeated me once losing to Bohman as well, or anyone else who fought Ai for not beating him so Playmaker wouldn’t have had to fight.”

“We didn’t even get that far.” And Kengo scolds now, because that cleaning robot had wiped the floor with the both of them and that had been embarrassing. “We lost to a cleaning robot.”

“And you can only get stronger so you won’t lose again. So long as big brother and I are still here, we have second chances. Sure there’s no Bohman or Ai anymore to ask a rematch of, but there’s Soulburner and Playmaker.”

“And Emma,” Kengo realises. Yes, he’d defeated her but the same probably applied to her as well. She wouldn’t let that defeat stand for too long. “And I wouldn’t mind another crack at Soulburner myself.” This time without the Despair from the Dark trick, especially since it hadn’t worked the first time around. Zombies didn’t go together very well with his drones.

“Sounds like a plan.” She smiles. “I wonder if Go Onizuka will come back to Charisma duelling, too. I wouldn’t mind a duel with him one day.” Seeing the grimace on his face, she adds: “Oh, don’t be like that. He’s worked hard to reverse the effects of having that AI, you know. He’s trying to find his old self and then build on it, become stronger in his own way, you know.”

“He duelled that Ignis, didn’t he.” And so did the Knights of Hanoi. Was it only he and Emma who’d been taken down by that robot? That smarted even more… But he saw Zaizen Aoi’s point: he could either grumble and be unproductive, or get stronger in anticipation for a rematch or similar circumstances.

And VRAINS might not be in dire straits from Ignis warfare anymore, but there was always a battle for a bounty hunter to engage in.

Emma chose that moment to trip the code, but that didn’t matter. They’d reached the end of their discussion anyway.

And this time it was a tag duel puzzle. With Emma already at the door, it left the two of them.

Aoi turns to him. “Up for this?”

He shrugs. There were worse partners than a girl who’d already earned Emma’s respect, after all. And even though the puzzle forces them through every Ignis’ unique deck, they make it through, and what Aoi lacks in ruthlessness she makes up for with astuteness and more experience with the Cyverse than he’s ever had.

Briefly, he imagines Playmaker in these duels: Playmaker who’s had the most experience with the Cyverse cards. But whoever had duelled the Ignis and shut down the Soltis didn’t seem to have triggered any of the traps. In fact, it was a clear road to the mass-produced look-alikes and back, and traps in every other door in the building.

Even the toilets are barred and it was blatantly clear that the Ignis didn’t appreciate human condition and apparently had had far too much time on their hands. But it only made him more concerned about the Soltis. If he’d written such extensive codes for immaterial doors, then what of the Soltis?

Finally, Emma broke the lock and they opened the archives. There are Soltis here too, slumped over in various positions. And boxes: there are countless boxes on the shelves. They’re all labelled, mercifully, but he draws the line at going through boxes. He’s a programmer and a hacker, not a book-keeper.

“I’m checking on the Soltis,” he says. “You two check in here and give me a call when you’re ready to move on.”

Emma looks curious, but Aoi just gives him a wave. Maybe it’s because he said he’ll come back, or maybe they’ve reached an understanding too.

Any traps in the archive, the pair of them can handle, he thinks. There haven’t been that many tag battle ones… and Emma can practice her dual-tasking if there are. And if Emma sneaks a few hacking lessons in while she’s at it… well, he’s not there to say it’s a ridiculous idea and Zaizen Akira is probably more focused on the rest of the employees than the three of them.


	8. Position (Emma)

Kengo doesn’t like Aoi tagging along, at first. Emma can tell: in the short snappish way he talks, in the way he pushes to the front and tries every door, leaving the two women to the duel puzzles when they emerge. But whatever he sees in Aoi, he seems to slowly warm up to. She’s holding up just fine with the duel puzzles, anyway. Better than Emma, sometimes, but maybe because they’re all variations on a Cyverse theme and Aoi’s duelled with an Ignis, if only for a short period of time. Sometimes her own Marincess cards come up, and she pauses only slightly at the beginning before breezing through the puzzles. Emma starts keeping a mental tally on how many puzzles she gets through before Kengo breaks the locks.

The slowest are the Ignistar decks, and Emma thinks it’s because Aoi is still scared. And who can blame her? All the Cyverse have such tricky effects it’s hard to safely outmanoeuvre them, especially in duel puzzles with only one attempt. They’ve seen what happens when they get it wrong and it’s only pure luck that Kengo breaks the lock right then or else Emma’s duel disk would have been a goner.

Or have had an infection of some sort. She’s not sure that dark spike that appeared out of the ground was solid or not but she’s glad to have not had to test it. She’s not carrying a spare duel disk, after all. She should, but in her defence it was the middle of the night and she’d been out for at least a day before that. But Aoi hasn’t triggered one of those yet, though she’s pushed the time limit on a couple of them early on. She’s gaining steam, though, and Kengo seems to be gaining an appreciation too – and Emma wonders if part of it was her stumble earlier but she’s not going to ask and restate her blunder.

Still, she manages to sneak a few decoding attempts off Kengo now, and even manages to find one that forces Kengo and Aoi to team up in a series of tag puzzles. Then he wanders off to check on the Soltis and she wonders if that’s for good or ill. Aoi doesn’t seem fazed, though, so he can’t have said anything too blunt beforehand. She’s a ways from convincing Kengo that Aoi will make a decent bounty hunter… and she can’t blame anyone for that, because she took quite a while to be convinced of the same herself. But Aoi, even if she hasn’t learnt coding directly from Akira, has learnt from his ingenuity and his protectiveness of her, and has learnt many more skills from being a covert idol in Link VRAINS, and, later, one of its heroes. She’s learnt, too, from teaming up with Aqua and fighting overwhelming might… but those are the cruellest lessons of them all, especially when Playmaker has defeated every enemy the rest of them have failed to overcome.

What does that make Playmaker? she wonders idly. And what does it mean when he loses?

Hopefully they never have to find out, even if that’s a cruel place to put a child… and that much she’s sure of, even though she suspects that, at least now, Aoi and Akira knows more. She won’t ask, though. She owes Playmaker that, and ignorance is bliss for the both of them.

She just whistles instead, looking at the papers. For a digital age, there’s far too much she thinks but there is a certain kind of security to it. A certain kind of frailty too, given they can all be burnt and restoring them without copies or digital backups would be impossible.

But the employee contracts are here as well as online, and it’s a race to see who can find them first and they’ve at least cracked the lock on the door.

But evidently the Soltis nor SOL Technologies thought much about cleaning it up, because Emma coughs the moment she picks up the first box.

“This is ridiculous,” Aoi mutters on the other side of the room. At least she’s picked up a mask and some latex gloves from another room and is putting them to good use.

“You don’t have spares of those, do you?” Emma asks hopefully. Inwardly, she kicks herself for not having come prepared… but she was planning on decoding, in all fairness, not pouring through mouldy paper.

Aoi throws her another pair. “Lucky I picked them up from the cleaning stores.” The mask crinkles as she grins beneath it. “I do hope we don’t find insects in here though.”

“Why?” Emma grins back. She doesn’t imagine Aoi is the sort to run screaming from them.

“That would make it even more gross.” Aoi shrugs.

And that’s fair enough. They dig through the papers, run the ones on Akira’s list to him, and then move on.

The next door, Emma takes advantage of the absence of both Kengo and an immediate duel puzzle, and offers it to Aoi. She stares blankly.

“Come on,” Emma prods. “You’ve done rudimentary hacking before and don’t tell me you haven’t. That butterfly you set on your brother? Hiding the ID of your Blue Angel account?”

“Yeah, and that’s about all I could do,” Aoi protests, “and I’ve been doing more covert ops than programming with you.” Though they had covered a bit: mostly pouring over other people’s codes: like the Ignis, like Blood Shephard.

“Well, here’s your lesson.” Emma first guided her through how to find the code, then tapped at the screen. “You’ve seen plenty of Ignis code. See if you can spot Ai’s little trap.”

Aoi squints at the screen. Emma waits patiently; she’s already spotted it of course, but Aoi finds it before she scrolls past.

“Here.” She uses the hand instead of her cursor – clever girl.

“And what do you do with it?” Emma asks. “But do me a favour and don’t actually do anything, yet.”

“Well, that’s an option,” Aoi flippantly replies. “Do nothing. Or we can delete the code, assuming there’s no other bits of code and that the code itself won’t trigger from attempts at deleting it. Or we can write another code to counter this one – which may or may not involve springing a trap.”

“We’ve been springing a lot of traps,” Emma agreed. “That’s the trouble with password locks. You can delete the code, but given it’s intertwined with the lock you’ll then have to write a whole new code to get around that. Amateur hacks can easily be reversed without affecting the lock mechanism but, of course, Ai was no amateur. He was sloppy, though.”

“Meaning he could have hidden his code better?” Aoi asks. “And how do I spring the trap?”

“Try to unlock the door, of course.” Emma grins. “The question is what to do when the trap’s been sprung.”

Her tried and true method works here as well: unlock the door in the tiny window of opportunity between the loop of puzzles and then wipe the code to allow them to enter a new one at their leisure.

“Security’s not going to be thrilled,” Aoi comments.

“They’ll be happier than me entering my own and then them having to break through that,” Emma points out. “But we hackers are sometimes hired to test locks like this and they’d rather we didn’t destroy all their codes in the process.”

“In other words, important for any hacker and bounty hunter to know.” Though she doesn’t know what she wants to do in the future, these skills are still important in protecting Link VRAINS. She’s made the choice to become a more proactive heroine: to become the Blue Angel in more than just name and fame, and that means sometimes covert ops and being a vigilante and her brother’s sword when he can’t take direct action himself.

It makes them the perfect team, because she can do those things for him that he can’t because of his position. And she won’t charge an arm and a leg like Emma.

Which reminds her, she needs to follow that up with Akira. Not that she’s minded the time spent with Aoi.

“Done,” Aoi says, and the door swings open.

“Good job,” Emma compliments, as the duel hologram fades. “How many doors have we got left?”

“You’d know better than me,” Aoi returns.

Which is probably true, but it’s not like Bounty Hunters have a free reign inside SOL Technologies… usually.

Oh, she is definitely going to take advantage of this once they’ve unlocked all the doors. The things she can sell from here…

And the more things she could have done but won’t because she’s firmly on Akira’s side, even if she won’t admit it.

“By the way,” Aoi says, faux casually. “Your brother was telling me something interesting.”

“Oh?” she asks, because she can’t think of what Kengo would know about her that’s embarrassing… and she thought she’d gone down with dignity during their little sibling duel. She’d changed his mind about purging her account, at least.

“Yeah.” She grins suddenly. “And I’ll tell you the same thing I told him: I wouldn’t mind you as a sister-in-law.”

It takes a moment for that to process, and then she can’t stop laughing. Imagining Blood Shephard as a matchmaker is just too hilarious… though Akria was probably the easiest and most obvious target. “I’m not looking to get married,” she assures, “and neither is your brother.”

“Doesn’t mean it has to stay that way,” Aoi shrugs.

Is she trying to match them up too?

Oh well, she’ll think about it when she needs to, which is not covered in dust and hacking their way through Sol Technologies with the subject’s little sister. And she’s got a brother to reconnect with first, anyway. And she doubts this is the end of cleaning up after the Ignis mess, even if her work is technically at Akira’s expense.

“Oh.” Aoi stops suddenly. “Weren’t we supposed to call your brother?”

“Whoops.” Emma had forgotten about that as well. Oh well; no harm done and she doubts he minds, otherwise he wouldn’t have left them to begin with.


	9. Sunrise (Yuusaku)

He knows what will happen, but he cries all the same.

In all honesty, he doesn’t remember the last time he cried. Not when he fought Kusanagi. Not when it had been him and Revolver alone in the world. Not when he’d discovered that Revolver was the head of the Knights of Hanoi and the very person who’d saved him. Not, of late, when he woke from his nightmares, which after all these years still plagued him like clockwork.

Whispered screams still pass his lips every now and then at them, but no tears. His eyes burn from the lack of them… And yet here they are, spilling forth and there are many who would tell him Ai – an AI – isn’t worth those years.

Ai is – was – a part of him, though. Made from him. His partner. The soul who chose to self-destruct rather than lead to his death, and did Ai even understand that all humans had to die sometime or has he disappeared with the delusion that he’s stopped Yuusaku’s death flag and now he’ll live forever.

Ai was already deluded in thinking life and living were the same thing, but considering he’s had a ten year fight for survival, perhaps he can be forgiven in thinking that.

Regardless, Yuusaku is crying now for the first time in years and his heart is screaming louder than it’s ever been. And words are tumbling out of his mouth – useless, senseless words – and there’s no response from Ai. Of course there isn’t because he’s already said everything he means to say but where’s the time for Yuusaku to refute it all? Where’s the opportunity to save him?

He couldn’t save him. Ai set his self-destruction up too perfectly for that, after saving him one final time. By the very sword Ai led him to five years ago, at that: a secret he’d kept well, until the end.

Plans within plans and Yuusaku thought he’d understood Ai, by the middle.

In the end, he was wrong.

In the end, he is crying over a corpse that the rest of the world will call a blank Soltis and move on.

And he wants to stay there forever – because, in the moment, eternity feels like it can pass in the blink of an eye – but he doesn’t. He can’t because before he can think of anything else, he hears footsteps, and hears a female voice.

He flees because it’s no-one he recognises and, regardless, he wants no-one right now. No-one except Ai and, of course, Ai won’t answer him again.

He’s clear of the SOL Technologies headquarters before he realises his hands are empty. He stares at them; wasn’t he holding onto Ai just a moment ago? But, of course, he’d left the empty cask with all the Ai clones. Will they even know which one he was, in the end? Will anyone care?

If Yuusaku went back there, will he know? Does it even matter? The Ai who was his partner was a little humanoid figure in his duel disk, after all.

It hangs heavy on his arm, now, and the Cyverse deck is still set in it. But Hanoi have changed their ways. The Ignis are all gone. Bohman is gone. Queen at the head of Sol Technologies who was driving their cold cruelty is incapacitated – though with Ai gone, who knows how long that will last.

He doesn’t care. It doesn’t matter anymore. He’s had his ten year long revenge and saved Link VRAINS and he’s paid for it with his hard-won peace and Ai.

He’d thought for a fleeting moment after the tower of Hanoi, after defeating Bohman, that he’d found – at long last – peace. But how can it be called peace with this kind of ending?

The tears are drying on his face, stiffening his cheeks. The night air is cool and he’s not sure where he’s ended up. If he thinks about it long enough and looks for a landmark, he’ll work it out. He knows researched Den City thoroughly before moving back here, after all. But it doesn’t matter where he is; he doesn’t care to know. Just like he doesn’t care to answer the constant stream of calls.

He knows what it will be, anyway. Kusanagi, probably. Likely Takeru too. The others don’t know how to contact him but he doubts the Zaizen siblings lack the resources to find out. Still, it doesn’t matter. They’ll only be asking about Ai and the only topic regarding Ai he wants to think about is how it’s ended up.

He saved all of Link VRAINS twice over so why couldn’t he save his own partner?

But how could he have done it? He thought his lock programme would keep Ai in but he’d shown he could slip in and out with free will. He thought he’d hacked his way into Ai’s memories but how much of that was orchestrated, how much of it had been Ai guiding him where to look? He’d never even created a trap as delicate as Blood Shephard’s, or replicated the coding as completely and decisively as SOL Technologies. What had he accomplished, thinking he could read the Ignis code, that couldn’t have happened by the will of said Ignis alone? He could recognise it, yes, but maybe that was all.

And maybe that’s how well he’d known Ai, in the end. Ai who’d left a second time, taking his bid to find a place free from strife, and came back as the cause of the next wave of strife himself. And Roboppi, who he’d taken for granted, who’d watched over him and seen more than he’d ever realised…

He’s left Ai at SOL Technologies, and Roboppi at home. At that cold, slowly growing dustier, apartment he called a home.

And where is he now? Avoiding SOL Technologies. Avoiding home.

But what use is a body? He’s not going to try and recreate Ai because that’ll just be a mess for everyone involved. Because he can’t do it; he knows he can’t do it. It’d be a shadow at best, incapable of free will and incapable of embodying all of Ai’s strange character quirks… And where had those come from? he wondered fleetingly. He’d never been particularly vivacious, but then again, he remembered little from the time before the Lost Incident. Bohman’s little trick about identities had been particularly cruel… but at the same time he’d come to peace with that idea long ago. The Fujiki Yuusaku from the past no longer existed and he was himself wearing that name and had been for the last ten years. It was something he’d reconciled. It was something his parents hadn’t been able to reconcile. It was something that didn’t matter to Ai, because Ai had been born during that time. In a sense, they’d both developed personalities during that time.

And Roboppi… he can recreate Roboppi but how can he? Roboppi was his failure, and it wasn’t even him from beginning to end. He’d been happy though, even if he hadn’t admitted it, when Ai’s backup in Roboppi had saved him. He’d been torn, though, when he realised the consequences. Torn when the new Roboppi was no longer interested in him, and he couldn’t hear that soft “welcome home, Master” he was so accustomed to.

He’d taken them for granted: Roboppi, and Ai, and probably all the allies he’d made on this journey as well. And now it’s over, it’s all over and the rest of the world and its battlers can move on. Kusanagi can continue reconnecting with Jin. The Zaizen siblings can rebuild SOL Technologies from the ground up. Go and Blue Angel can return to their charisma duelling. Takeru can return home, to his family and friends.

And Yuusaku… where will Yuusaku go?

Where is Yuusaku going?

He doesn’t know.

He doesn’t know. He just keeps on walking aimlessly, not really looking, not really listening.

He’s not even really thinking: not linearly. He just lets his thoughts drift and they do well enough without his input. Thoughts of Ai. Of their duel. Of all the hints Ai had dropped beforehand. Of how he couldn’t, in the end, save him. How he’d left that prone figure there, hands clasped in an eternal prayer when hadn’t Ai said so many times that AI don’t pray, they only calculate the best odds for success?

Survivor’s guilt comes to mind.

Yes, that’s probably appropriate but a name does nothing to ease the stiffness in his face, or the fog in his mind, or the oozing holes in his heart.

Streaks of pink now dot the sky but that brings nothing either.


	10. Teamwork (Hayami)

Morning comes.

Hayami’s made her fifth cup of coffee and she’s sure Akira has drunk even more. Still, they’ve been making progress. Aoi, Ghost Girl and her companion have swept the building and cleared the locks on every door (including the toilets because, she supposed, what used did Soltis have for toilets?). The Soltis are all gathered in the basement parking and have been checked over and found to be completely blank. That’s both good news and bad, but at least it means they can reprogramme them without running into any nasty bits of code tucked away. And their general accounts and firewall is up and running.

Really, their main pending concerns are the company’s inherent corruption and Link VRAINS. For all that Ignis boast their superior programming skills, it hadn’t been that hard – just time-consuming – to purge.

But, she thinks, it would have also been impossible to do alone. Particularly the duel puzzles locks around every corner. Particularly the ones that were tag duels and the system wouldn’t allow one person to complete both roles. And there’d simply been too much to do.

But morning’s come and at least half the workers are slumped at their desks however the company is semi-functional again. And Akira is reading through the statement prepared for him and making his own amendments, while Ghost Girl standing next to him is saying something about school.

“I’ll stop by the apartment with Aoi, since she needs to change into her uniform for school,” Ghost Girl repeated when Akira looked up, and both Akira and Hayami were paying attention. “Do you want me to bring you anything back from there?”

Akira looks down at himself. His suit’s a little wrinkled from a night at work and nothing a quick iron downstairs won’t fix, but is otherwise fine. And at least he is in a suit, unlike most of the others. Luckily Hayami is in a suit as well, and it’s not as though they’ll need the entire company at the press release.

“No, I’m fine,” Akira says, “though Aoi, remember to pack a lunch as well.”

“Yes, brother,” Aoi dutifully replies. “You’ll be alright, here?”

“We’ll be fine.” He smiles: short but real, and Aoi returns the smile and leaves with Ghost Girl.

Hayami smiles as well. She doesn’t get to see her boss smiling all too often, and most of what she does see is for the benefit of his audience. But sibling love is beautiful like that. “It brings out the best in people.”

“What does?” Akira asks.

Whoops. Hayami realises she’s wandered over to him. Luckily, she’s got the documents in hand as well as a ready-made excuse. “We’re expected down stairs in half an hour.”

“Half an hour,” Akira repeats. “Right, but I don’t think that’s what you were referring to earlier.” He has an expectant look on his face, as though Hayami’s stray thoughts are valuable.

He’s considerate. Still, Hayami blushes. “I was thinking out loud,” she admits. “Thinking that family – love – brings out the best in people.”

He smiles again. “That’s right; you encouraged me, when Blue Angel fought the Knights of Hanoi.”

“I’m still a Blue Angel fan.” She smiles back. “I’m sorry Zaizen-san, but given I’ve only seen you duel once, she’s still my favourite.”

“Tell her that next time you see her,” he advises. “It’ll make her happy. But as for family, remember this: that Revolver almost destroyed all of Link VRAINS because of his father.”

The smile slides off Hayami’s face; she had forgotten that. And now that she thinks about that, she remembers something else as well. “I wonder what Playmaker will do now.”

“Playmaker?” Akira repeats. He’s scanning his notes again. Hayami peers at the neat script. In essence, they’re admitting the truth to the best of their knowledge (and leaving the Ignis out of the public eye, of course : that Playmaker and the Knights of Hanoi had collaborated and liberated SOL Technologies from a skilled hack, however their role in the future of SOL Technologies would likely be as vigilantes. “It is the powers who oppose us that ensure we remain on the correct path” is the nice little quote to explain that with gold ink and glitter.

But the reality is that they have no idea what Playmaker will do now.

“Playmaker fought the Knights of Hanoi initially for revenge,” Hayami says. “And the Ignis was his partner throughout that. On top of that, the Ignis was born from him… So will his need for revenge come back?”

Akira frowns as well. “I didn’t think about that,” he admits, “but I don’t know. I can’t pretend to know Playmaker, at the end of the day. And I tried to change his mind about revenge once. I learnt his story well enough, and though we understood each other, we’d been on blatantly different paths even then. And the boy who becomes Playmaker… I’ve only met him twice and know little else.”

“In short, you think you know the image of Playmaker as the saviour of Link VRAINS but not much else.” But she also remembers Akira after Blue Angel’s defeat, Akira who’d electrocuted himself on Hanoi’s virus to free Playmaker from indecision. Akira had understood Playmaker well enough then… Or perhaps he’d simply likened Playmaker to anyone else his age.

In the end, Hayami shrugs. If Playmaker acts, they’ll know it soon enough. Playmaker hadn’t shown an inclination towards covert operations on the whole.

And they have a press release that has little to do with Playmaker to get to.

She lets Akira finish reading his speech and correcting it, while she double checks her own documents and then heads downstairs. A crowd is gathered outside already and she’s thankful they’d moved all the Soltis first off because there would have been no room for them otherwise. Still, the PR staff are scrambling to set things up: lights, cameras, recordings and Hayami does a quick check to make sure it’s all going smoothly before heading back upstairs.

“We’re almost ready,” she tells Akira.

He nods, straightens his papers, and follows her down.

The crowd, of course, has multiplied. Hayami isn’t even sure how much they know, but Akira starts from the beginning anyway. Way back at the beginning, from the Lost Incident, and a tale of two orphans trying to find a place in the world.

Hayami can feel tears in her eyes when she explains how he’d earn money for the both of them, how he developed the computer skills that eventually led him into Link VRAINS, and later still, into SOL Technologies. And she sheds a few when he returns to the topic of the Lost Incident, how much they’d lost, physically and emotionally, how they all had years of therapy… and how the Lost Incident wasn’t quite ready to let him go. He didn’t mention that Playmaker and Soulburner were two of the victims, didn’t go into details because an astute journalist could dig it all up and expose them before they were ready, but the hints were enough for most. She saw other teary eyes in the crowd, amidst the confusion… because that was a tale of ten years ago, after all, and said nothing for why they were there today.

But Akira got there quickly enough. Summarised the events of the last few months: the objectives of Hanoi and the Another virus, of the mass upload to Link VRAINS caused by Bohman, by the sudden shut-down – all united under a common threat called the Ignis who have now finally been all eliminated.

“And as SOL Technologies has uncovered its own role in these tragedies, we are now re-examining our outlook, structure and staff in the hopes of preventing such occurrences again, and to offer the best and safest digital services for your enjoyment,” he finishes.

And the story of a romantic tragedy never fails to capture a crowd, Hayami thinks as she watches their reactions. It was artfully spun, in the end – she has to give their makeshift PR team due credit for that – and without compromising too much. And by selling SOL Technologies as the victim of several power-hungry individuals, he’s introduced the possibility of reformation. And if the public remains firmly seated on their side, it’ll be harder for the kings to continue their power-focused crusade and for Queen to be reinstated.

In other words, it was everything she’d hoped for when she’d seen the window of opportunity and leapt into it. And Queen was a shrewd businessman but she didn’t appeal to people’s sentiments like Akira did.

And speaking of Queen, Hayami wondered why the alias. And why Akira didn’t have an alias as well… or maybe he did. Which chessboard piece would he be? she wondered. Not the king, since they were the shareholders (and why were there three kings on a chessboard to begin with?). But there was no equivalent to the queen and despite his rising through the ranks, he wasn’t a ruthless bulldozer like her.

Not a rook, clearly, then. A bishop? A knight?

Of course a knight. A knight in shining armour in more ways than one, and now he was saving SOL Technologies from self-destruction.

“Hayami.” She jumps. Akira has finished answering questions and is beckoning to her. “Time to get back to work.”

And there was going to be a lot of that, cleaning things up, but she doesn’t mind – so long as no-one and nothing crash the party. That’s not too much to hope for, is it? No inter-company politics and nobody trying to take over Link VRAINS again?


	11. Classmates (Takeru)

Takeru goes to school on time, though part of him wanders why he bothers. He does need to withdraw formally, of course – or, technically, transfer. He wonders if his regular school will take him back, though: he wasn’t exactly a model student. On top of that, it was Flame’s hacking that got him into Den City in the first place.

He may need to ask Kusanagi for help. Or he could go the direct approach and just talk to his school principal and see how it goes.

Yeah, he should probably do that, he thinks. He owes the school that much, for all the trouble he’s put them through over the years. And what for? In the end, most of those fights had accomplished nothing. They didn’t get rid of that empty feeling in his chest, or that volcano that was always bubbling, threatening to spill over. It wasn’t any of those fist fights, in the end, that saved him – and, worse, it had dragged Kiku into it, and not to mention all the times his grandparents had to patch him up…

But it wasn’t a fist fight, in the end. It never was. It was always duels.

And now, he wonders what he’ll do about those duels. What Playmaker will do about those duels.

His deck was Flame’s, after all. His Cyverse deck, and the deck before that was long gone, tossed into the ocean the moment he could let go of it. That wasn’t until Flame, though. Wasn’t until that fateful duel, when he’d finally unlocked those cards and that disk.

Ten years. It’s already been ten years.

He needs to talk to his parents too, he knows. Especially after that duel with Revolver. Especially after having met Flame and Playmaker. How out of the loop he’s left them. How long he’s starved them of his apologies and his love.

And Kiku, who stood by him before and after everything. He doesn’t know what he did to deserve Kiku, even when he left her twice: first in that foolish dash from home in anger that had led him straight to the Hanoi, and then now in the fight with Flame and his past. But that’s all over now. He’ll come back to Den City for visits maybe – probably – but he’ll go back to living at home.

He misses his family – his grandparents, Kiku, and his parents’ graves – something terribly. And in the morning after Ai’s defeat, that’s even more so.

He’s only stayed this long because of Ai, anyway. Because Flame’s defeat was the one who cast the biggest hole and he’d been an instrument to that.

“Homura-kun?”

Zaizen Aoi’s voice makes him jump. He’s stopped in the middle of the courtyard, he realises. She’s standing a few feet away, staring.

“Uhh…” He doesn’t know what to say, suddenly. She’s Blue Angel – Blue Girl – Blue Maiden – but she doesn’t know he’s Soulburner.

Actually, that’s an easy one. The time for secrecy is gone, after all.

“I’m Soulburner.”

She stares some more.

Whoops; he probably should have checked his surroundings, but nobody stops walking. He doubts they’re even listening.

Finally, she steps closer. “I suppose you know who I am,” she says quietly, “to tell me that out of the blue.”

“Flame told me,” he admits. He never would have put it together himself, otherwise.

“Then you know Playmaker.”

That went without saying.

“He didn’t come to school yesterday.”

And that does require an explanation, because last he heard, Blue Angel didn’t know either of their identities. Unless… “Did Aqua tell you?”

“Aqua?” she repeats. “No. It was a bit of a series of coincidences. I had most of the clues in my hand for a long time but never realised until…” She stops, glances around, then finishes: “Until I met Fujiki-kun at Café Nagi with my brother.”

“That duel Lightning set up.” Takeru scowls. “Of course that was a huge security leak and we hadn’t thought at all…” Honestly, they’re lucky it was only the Zaizen siblings who put it together.

Wait a sec… “What about the bounty hunters?”

“Ghost Girl says she won’t pry,” Aoi replies. “Ignorance is bliss and she owes Playmaker. And the video was wiped. Akira checked to make sure.”

“A woman of honour, huh.” But she’d never seemed like the other bounty hunters he’d met. Then again, neither had Go Onizuka, even if it was only because he’d been masquerading as one.

They started walking to class. “Have you heard from him?” Aoi asks.

“No.” Takeru shakes his head. “Though I can’t blame him for wanting to be alone right now.”

“No,” Aoi agrees. “But I can’t help but worry anyway. Who does he have?”

Who did he have left, indeed? Takeru realises once again how little he knows about him, and he’s called himself his friend.

“And you?” Aoi asks.

“I’m fine,” he says automatically, because he knows what she’s asking. Then, at her frown, he adds: “I’m moving back to my hometown. I miss my grandparents and Kiku.”

“Kiku?” she asks.

“My…” How does he explain her? “Kind of like a sister, kind of like a childhood friend. She’s always looking out for me and supporting me.” Then, because she’s like a kindred spirit considering Miyu, he adds: “I knew her before the Lost Incident.”

“Oh.” Yes, she understands what that level of support means to him. “Miyu’s being discharged,” she offers him in return. “I guess that means the inevitable reunion with her mother is fast approaching.” She laughs awkwardly, and at his confused look explains the tale of the ring and how she’d taken the blame.

And he can’t say how long a woman’s misplaced scorn will last, especially with the Lost Incident to colour it all.

“Will you come back to Link VRAINS?” Aoi asks, at the lockers.

“Probably.” It doesn’t take him long to decide, now that somebody else is asking the questions. “I want to show the peaceful VRAINS to Kiku.”

“That’ll be nice.” She smiles. “Come say hi when you do. I’d like to meet her.”

“Which you will I be looking for?” he asks with a smile of his own.

“Either, or.” She shrugs. “I’ll wear the guise the situation calls for: idol in the sun, vigilante in the shadows. And I want to protect my brother and the things he’s worked for, and keep Aqua’s deck alive.”

It’s the same with him and Flame, as well.

As for Playmaker… who knows.

They split after that; Takeru isn’t in the same class as Aoi or Yuusaku… or Naoki, who he sees run past and start talking to Aoi.

She turns at the corner and looks back at him, though. “I’ll meet you at the usual place after school?”

Café Nagi probably, though isn’t her usual place technically. But she doesn’t want to say it so explicitly with Naoki right there, probably, so he just nods.

He almost laughs when Naoki thinks they’re setting up a date, but he should probably stop by Kusanagi again before leaving anymore.

And in the meantime, he needs to survive another day’s classes (and it’ll be a relief to be back to the far more manageable workload of his regular school instead of all this stuff that’s over his head) and talk to his principal.

Which he does at lunch time, because there’s no Yuusaku to keep him company and Aoi doesn’t show up for lunch either. And it’s an awkward conversation because he has to explain he’s turned over a new leaf, has to go to the principal of this school as well as his homeroom teacher and get them to say that, yes, he’s been putting in the effort (including some help from Yuusaku and Kusaangi) and he’s still being overwhelmed by the higher standards they preach, and he’s not sure how or why he got into this school during his temporary transfer to Den City for personal reasons, but that’s all now resolved and he’s planning on moving back home as soon as possible and could he please have a second chance of being an ordinary high school student in an ordinary school?

But the principal knows his backstory and is willing to give him a second chance despite all of that. “It’ll be up to you to overcome the impression of your past,” he cautions, “and that includes not being provoked into fights.” Which is going to be the most challenging part, because he’s always been easily provoked and the Lost Incident left his nerves permanently frayed and no amount of counselling fixed that.

Though he should probably go back to her. That’s another part of his past he squandered.

“You do that.” The principal sounds pleased. “I’ll re-enrol you for the next term then. See you in my office on the first day.”

“Thank you.” He bows to the current principal and homeroom teacher, who agree to get his records in order, and makes to leave.

“Homura.” His teacher stop him. “You may not have the grades to show it, but you’ve made excellent progress, and I hope you continue that through your tend of term exams and also when you move back home.”

He nods. He hopes to; he plans to – and hopefully his temper doesn’t get in the way of that. But maybe that duel with Revolver has added a few extra bandaids. He supposes the only way to know will be to start the new term and find out.

And it’s probably a good thing he came to school anyway, considering there’s another week and a half of term.

And exams, which he’s going to need to put his best foot forward for.

And Yuusaku has now missed two days of school the week before exams, which can’t be good for him. And Takeru realises he doesn’t even know where Yuusaku tends to rank, or how much he cares about his grades, or what his future plans are.

And now, he may have lost his chances to finding out. But he’s not closing doors; he won’t, and he’ll catch Yuusaku by the arm one day if he doesn’t show back up. Because even if he hasn’t been a very good friend, he’s going to hang on to Playmaker.

And now that the world’s stopped spinning like crazy with the Ignis warfare, they can start living their lives again, and that includes building on the parts of their friendship that don’t involve the Ignis and the Lost Incident.

But he’ll give him a bit of space first, since he’s asking so blatantly – for both Yuusaku and Ai.


	12. After School Cafe (Aoi)

Aoi meets Takeru at Café Nagi, as she suspects. It had been a guess on her part, but Naoki had come at the wrong time and that was one person she definitely doesn’t want knowing about their Link VRAINS identities. He’s not a bad person, she knows, but he’s too careless with information and too much of a hero-worshipper.

He’s getting better at duelling, though. She won’t deny him that. But if his kidnapping, all the tragedies of Link VRAINS and Emma haven’t managed to teach him humility, she’s not sure what will.

And she’s not sure how Yuusaku will react to the badgering when he returns… if he returns. He’s not in class again today, and exams are probably far from his mind. She’d forgotten about them herself until the teacher mentioned them, and she’s sure Akira has forgotten as well.

No more exploring the buildings of SOL Technologies until they’re over, she thinks. Between all the fights in Link VRAINS and her brief coma, she’s more behind in her studies than she’s ever been approaching an end of term. And she needs good grades. They’re important: to her, to showing her brother she’s not squandering the luxuries he’s afford her, and to the prospects of her future.

As much as she likes Emma, she doesn’t plan to spend her entire life as a cyber hacker being her primary occupation. Nor does she plan to run a small café with a hacking operation in the background like Kusanagi Shoichi, though she has to respect that and the reasons behind that as well.

But she says none of that when she greets Takeru, and Kusanagi in turn, and confirms Yuusaku’s absence from school again.

“I haven’t seen him either,” Kusanagi says, “and he’s hasn’t answered any calls.” He sighs, suddenly looking older than his years. “Honestly, I don’t know what to do now. Our reason for teaming up is gone, and I cast away my relationship with him in favour of my brother and I can’t take that back.”

“I don’t think,” Takeru says, even as Aoi tries to puzzle that out. Are they talking about something that happened in the duel between Playmaker and this man? She doesn’t know the details; only that it had been a low blow from Lightning but Playmaker had risen to the occasion, and then collapsed from the mental strain of his decision. “I don’t think,” he repeats, “that Yuusaku holds that against you. But none of us are family to him: that special person who’d stand by him despite everything, who’d throw away anything for him. And Yuusaku doesn’t have that; that’s the problem now.”

And that’s true, Aoi realises. Takeru is right: she has Akira, Kusanagi has his little brother, and Takeru has his Kiku. But Yuusaku… none of them know a person like that for Yuusaku. If Kusanagi was the shield that protected him and his identity in Link VRAINS, then he’s the closest thing… but he’s said it himself: he’s put his little brother first once already, and who can begrudge him that?

“Maybe,” she muses, “Ai was that role for him… and honestly, that just makes it worse.” Because he’s lost his partner, his trusted confident and he’s reached out to none of them.

“He’s still in Den City,’ Kusanagi says. “I’m trying not to snoop because Yuusaku clearly doesn’t want to speak to us right now, but I had to check.”

And that comforts her a little. He’ll watch from a distance regardless of the barriers that have been erected between them. But whether he’ll take care of himself or not is another story. Whether he’ll pick himself up out of this weight and move on is another story… and maybe it’s unfair to ask that, but what other choice is there? The Ignis can’t return, and she doubts even Yuusaku will want to reconstruct them after the ten year long fight they’ve had. And so the only choice is to pick up the pieces again and move on.

And, really, who can do such a thing on their own?

“How many days?” she asks. Kusaangi and Takeru stare at her; she wonders if she interrupted them – she’d stopped listening – or if she simply hadn’t said enough. “How many days before we’ve left him too long?” she extrapolates.

Kusanagi sighs. “That’s the million yen question, and I wish I knew what that magic number was, and not just for Yuusaku. But honestly, I don’t know. Haven’t we all even said we don’t have the right to stage an intervention for him?”

“I don’t think so.” Takeru frowns. “That just means we need to take an extra step, but in blatant terms if you see someone getting beat up, you’d jump into the fight, wouldn’t you?” When they stare at him instead, he amends… “Well, I would – or did. Still need to work on the non-violent solutions.”

Aoi can’t help but laugh. Somehow, the glasses and the way his hair flops in front of his face don’t match up with the words. But Soulburner was quick to pick up fights. Maybe he’s not that far off the mark after all.

Takeru catches her expression, takes off his glasses, and combs his hair back with his fingers. “Better?” he asks, then shakes his hair back down again. “Wow, that feels weird now.”

“Looks weird too,” Aoi agrees. “I think I prefer the current you. No offence.”

“None taken,” Takeru replies. “The old me was a fight-picking slob who didn’t appreciate the things he had after the Lost Incident and couldn’t work out how to reconcile things.”

He doesn’t say what things. Aoi thinks she can guess at least a few of them, but she doesn’t ask either. She doesn’t need to know.

“Oh,” he recalls suddenly. “Kusanagi-san. I meant to let you know it’s all organised. I’ll be moving back to my hometown after exams, and starting the new term there.”

“Ah.” Something flickers across his face before he smiles. “Then we won’t be seeing you very often. But stop by when you’re visiting. You’ve got a lifetime of free coffees after all.” He glances at Aoi’s half-full cup, then adds: “That goes for you too.”

“Me?” Aoi blinks at her own cup. She’d planned to pay when she left.

“You also saved Link VRAINS,” he explains, “and my brother.”

She doesn’t think she deserves the thanks, considering how little she accomplished in the end… but she can’t dwell on that either. She can only get stronger. She’ll simply have to do her best to feel like she deserves the free coffees, then. “Thank you.”

“I’ll have to bring Jin by sometime in the next two weeks then,” Kusanagi continues, waving off her thanks. “I’d like you to meet him at least once before you go.”

“So he’s up to leaving the house?” Takeru grins. “That’s so good to hear.”

It is, especially when Aoi adds her news of Miyu’s impending discharge.

“Bring her around too, when she’s ready,” Kusanagi advises. “It’s up to her, of course, but I think Jin will benefit from being able to talk to the others involved.” And that means her as well, and Soulburner… and, most importantly, Playmaker.

She wonders for a moment whether Yuusaku would want to talk, considering how close-lipped he’s been in all his guises. But he opened up readily enough when confronted with the facts in SOL Technologies’ databank, and again when they’d met him here. He could have talked his way out of it… but perhaps even he knew they were coming to the end of the secrecies and constant fighting.

She doesn’t think she was wrong, either, in what she said to him because look at where they all are now: worrying about someone they can’t find, can’t face for something they weren’t able to spare him for. At least Takeru defeated Roboppi – but is that any better? she thinks suddenly. Playmaker was there. And where is that cleaning robot now. How is it?

When did AI become as fragile and individualistic as human beings?

And what had Playmaker been fighting for, other than revenge and moving on? It stopped being about both those things early on. Maybe even before he faced Revolver at the Tower of Hanoi. And it certainly hadn’t been about all that when Ignis was pitted against Ignis.

“A world where humans and AI could live together,” Takeru says. “But he also said this wasn’t the time to build that world. And then Ai threw his own future away and for what? I still don’t understand it.”

“If anyone does, it’s Yuusaku,” says Kusaangi, “but whether he chooses to share that with the rest of us or not is his choice.

Aoi’s phone pings. She checks the messages. Emma’s wondering what she’s doing.

She looks up a moment, then goes back to the text. “Exams coming up,” she types. She can’t share Café Nagi with Emma: it’ll open up a can of worms Emma’s tried to stay out of.

Finding Playmaker isn’t the problem, after all. They have Kusanagi who knows his habits and can hack his way into security cameras for that. Who might even have a tracking system allowing him to track the other in Link VRAINS when things weren’t publicised, that allowed them to find each other even with regular systems were down. She has the same thing with Emma, but Emma will think she’s just studying in the fresh air… or with a classmate.

Speaking of, “Homura-kun, don’t take this the wrong way but I’ve heard a few things about your grades.”

“Oh man, you too?” he groaned. “That’s the worst part of Flame hacking me into the school. I mean, I get I had to get close to Yuusaku somehow but I just can’t keep up with the workload and skipping so much school before it all hasn’t helped matters.”

“I’ll help you study,” she offers, before Kusanagi can offer his own services. It makes more sense for her to help anyway; she’s sitting the same exams. “We’ll get you through with passing marks, at least.”

“That’d be great.” He sighs, relieved. “I’d rather spend my break at home with my grandparents and Kiku than doing makeup exams, you know?”

What about Yuusaku? she wonders. He’s always had good grades but whether he’ll study, whether he even remembers to study, whether he’ll want to study with others (and especially with them) is all up in the air. She passes the message along anyway, and doesn’t miss the way Takeru looks momentarily hopeful. But who knows, really.

Friends and classmates do that though, don’t they? Study together.


	13. Family (Shoichi)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It is now over a month since I wrote this particular chapter and it's coronavirus' turn to make the world all loopy. Wash hands, social distancing and say mentally and physically safe!

Takeru and Aoi eventually leave for the library, and Shoichi has time to think between customers, between his pick up time. There’s still no Yuusaku, but he doesn’t expect Yuusaku to just stumble into the courtyard right now. Or maybe he will. He’s up near the Kogami household now, though. Looking into the bay. Maybe thinking of the plankoons. Maybe thinking of the stardust road.

He wishes Yuusaku will come see him soon, though. He wants to know what Yuusaku will do, what Yuusaku wants. If he wants him to butt out of the rest of his life or stick around, Shoichi will do that… but now, in this in between phase, what is he supposed to do? He sneaks peaks at security cameras but is he looking out for a friend that’s almost family or invading on someone’s privacy? He doesn’t know where the lines are, where to push and where to pull back… And he works in hospitality and should have developed an instinct for that.

Yuusaku’s always had one hell of a poker face though, even when he’s not physically there.

And what does that say about everyone who’s failed to understand him? Jin’s walls were obvious. Yuusaku’s weren’t quite so much but he’d begun to open up. But still…

What can he do until they open up: Yuusaku, and Jin as well.

But Jin is coming home – or, rather, to live with him in Den City. Jin agreed. Their parents agreed as well: that, aged as they were, Jin would be better with his brother and in a place he could work as often or as little as he wanted. Maybe a café isn’t the best place to start him off in but that’s the benefit of being able to pick where he sets up camp. He can start Jin off in quiet places where not too many customers come.

His mobile rings. Yuusaku? The hospital?

It’s the hospital, and he glances around the courtyard one more time before closing up shop. There’s still no Yuusaku, and again he chooses his blood brother over the one he’s made in battle. He doesn’t check the security cameras again; what’s the point, when he’ll be on the move himself.

He doesn’t check them until late at night, when he’s picked Jin up, driven him straight home and shown him every nook and cranny of his studio apartment and making sure he’s settling in before heading back out with the trick. Jin seems fine, but who knows. How will he know? He has no security cameras in his apartment and, besides, that’s a line he definitely can’t cross. He’s decorated a bit, though. Probably done a poor job. And stocked up the fridge and pantry. Definitely did a better job at that. And gotten a new pair of keys, complete with a keychain with a book because Jin had liked to read, back before and in the hospital’s long-term cottage as well.

And with that Jin had food and freedom, two essentials that had been denied to him in the Lost Incident and that, if Shoichi had his way, would never be denied to him again.

And there’d be plenty of time to spend together afterwards, but Jin needed to familiarise himself with his new home first. He’d planned to stay, initially, but seeing the way Jin’s eyes darted everywhere… Well, he wouldn’t intrude on that. He’d had the phone connected, too. Left his number on a sticky note. Jin knew how to reach him. Knew he was in arm’s reach.

Jin wasn’t too stubborn to ask for help, he thought.

Not even Yuusaku was too stubborn to ask for help, even if he’d asked it of very few people.

He suddenly brakes. He hasn’t been looking or thinking about where he’s driving but he’s wound up by the pier where he and Yuusaku had found that Cyverse deck. He’d been impressed at Yuusaku even back then – impressed from the first meeting, really, when he’d proved he had a weapon to survive in this world. But he hadn’t put two and two together until afterwards, hadn’t confronted him about the fact until afterwards, hadn’t picked apart the non-answers hiding the truth until afterwards – and how much had he missed? How much hadn’t he asked about, in the end?

He didn’t know if Yuusaku was still having nightmares or not. He didn’t know if he was cleaning the apartment himself now that Roboppi was out of commission, or even what he’d done with Roboppi’s physical form. He didn’t know if Yuusaku was eating when Kusanagi didn’t feed him and he wasn’t at school and keeping up appearance, and even when Yuusaku had mentioned Takeru’s plans to go back home, he’d never mentioned any plans of his own.

But here he is, at the pier where there aren’t going to be customers in the evening. He sighs and reverses the truck.

Then he stops, because there may not be customers but there is a figure in the gloom and he can guess who.

And he hadn’t checked the security cameras this time. It’s just coincidence, or the pull of something else.

Still, he parks the truck. Yuusaku – yes, it is Yuusaku in the headlights, turns around at the sound. Perhaps he’d thought they’d drive past. Perhaps he’d recognised the sound of the truck and hoped he wouldn’t notice. Maybe he hadn’t been thinking about anything related to him or the truck at all.

It doesn’t matter, though. Just like it doesn’t matter that Yuusaku hasn’t reached out to him because here their paths have crossed, and bets are off.

Yuusaku doesn’t turn back. Instead, he moves so he can sit more comfortably and still face the truck. “Kusanagi,” he says. His voice is as flat as when he’d first ordered a hot-dog from Café Nagi. Shoichi had just taken him for a customer, then.

Now he knows differently.

“Yuusaku.” In contrast, his own voice is brimming with emotion, emotions he hadn’t intended to portray so easily. But his voice trembled. Apologies and comfort and questions all tumbled into that name and his arms twitch.

To hell with it, he thinks, and hugs Yuusaku as soon as he’s close enough.

Yuusaku doesn’t fight it, but he doesn’t engage either. Maybe that’s enough, though, that Shoichi can offer this sort of comfort. Or maybe it’s meaningless. Maybe a lot of things humans do for each other or for themselves is meaningless but isn’t that how they live their lives?

But it’s not meaningless. Eventually, Yuusaku does pull away a little, and speaks. “Ai is gone.”

“I thought as much,” Shoichi admits – and then checks himself. Isn’t it callous to say it so plainly? But a plenitude of proof bled from SOL Technologies. “Zaizen held a press conference,” he elaborates.

“Did he.” It’s not phrased as a question. It’s too flat; a passing remark.

The emotion comes in the next comment: so subtle, but he knows Yuusaku well enough to detect different notes of flat. “I left Ai there. I left Roboppi, as well.”

And he understands: understands this much at least. Survivor’s guilt in all it’s glory and who of them has the right moreso than Yuusaku? Hadn’t he felt the same when Jin disappeared and came back in mental pieces? Why hadn’t it been him? Why hadn’t he been able to do something?

“We’d been lucky,” Shoichi admits, and Yuusaku openly stares at him for it. But Shoichi knows this much: he’s an adult and Yuusaku is a teenager who lost ten years of life and knows this inherently, even if he might not be able to admit it. “The Another incident, the Tower of Hanoi, and then Bohman. Lots of people were absorbed. For all intents and purposes, lots of people were held captive. But all of them survived. But Wind… he killed his partner. Kengo’s mother is a permanent quadriplegic. The Ignis are all gone.”

“I know.” And his voice is flat again. “It could have been worse. If I’d lost even once, even to you, people wouldn’t have woken up. But – “ And here his voice shakes. “But why does Ai have to die to save me? Why is Ai always saving me: even from the beginning…” And suddenly the words are tumbling out of him: suddenly Yuusaku is reaching up like Jin, like a child, and grabbing fistfuls of Shoichi’s coat and blabbing. “It was Ai who escaped the Hanoi and gave me the means of closing the door to my past. Ai who led us to the Cyverse deck. Ai who created the data storms. Ai who led us to Revolver, who gave my Cyverse Wizard to Naoki thinking it would help us be friends. Ai who helped me save Blue Angel, who helped me defeat Revolver, who stood up for me even when I had given him no reason to be so nice, who always cheered me on, who gave up his fellow Ignis to save human-kind and who sets up an elaborate suicide so I can stop dying in his simulations –“

And there’s the missing piece of the puzzle. Ai, an Ignis like all the others, had at some point run simulations on the human race. Somehow he’d come to the conclusion that his continued existence would get Yuusaku killed, and his way of protecting him was to take himself out of the equation once and for all.

And of course that’s cut Yuusaku to pieces, but he’s still not crying. Shoichi isn’t sure why that thought comes to mind but it’s right. In the headlights of his truck, Yuusaku’s eyes are still dry and dull. And his mouth is still moving, repeating the story again like a loop record.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just an FYI about the cottage – psychiatric hospitals (or some of the ones I’ve worked in, at least) have cottages for long term residents. Sometimes they’re just affiliated and not technically a part of the hospital, but I don’t think Jin was stable enough for something like that… and besides, he has family that wanted to take him home (and that’s a more permanent solution). But they also have cottages for patients who aren’t safe to go home but are there for too long and not acute enough to be kept in a ward, and they’re staffed by nurses/carers and there’s a doctor who oversees and visits the patients at regular intervals (and those patients are usually ones used for medical student long case exams as well). The time we see Shoichi visiting him, they’re in a room with a little table and a TV that struck me too personal to have been a public area (particularly when Lightning swoops in), so there’s my headcannon and messy explanation for same.
> 
> Also, I was going to say broken record because a loop recorder is something different in medicine, but repeating records aren’t necessarily broken considering you can set them to loop so here we are in a mini loop of our own.
> 
> (Sorry if none of that makes sense; I’m writing this chapter on night-shift)


	14. Survivor's Guilt (Yuusaku)

Yuusaku isn’t looking for anyone or anything but when Kusanagi shows up out of the blue, he realises he’s not actively looking for solitude either.

What he’s looking for is traces of Ai and he’s finally put it together, wandering the city. The warehouse Faust had held Shiima in that one time. Various places in Den City they’d walked or Kusanagi had set up his Café. Ryoken’s place and that little lookout point. And here, the pier near the abandoned warehouse Ai had hidden the Cyverse deck in.

And Kusanagi hugs him without much of a preamble. Perhaps he doesn’t know what to say either.

Yuusaku doesn’t know either. He doesn’t know how to respond to the hug… because hugging is a comfort for normal people but it just makes him feel… what?

He has good grades, a high IQ, and can hack into the pentagon with sufficient motivation and he can’t give words to his own emotions.

And then it’s all spilling out of him and he’s not even sure how or why. But it’s out: the extra bits no-one else had known about, and the reality he now faced.

And Kusanagi understood. This much, at least, he understood – and maybe Kusanagi had never grasped the true horror of confinement but he saw its aftereffects and he suffered his own sort of personal hell in watching his brother for ten long years. And, maybe, Yuusaku had yearned for a bit of that as well. Had gotten it. But he knew, he knew that Kusanagi had his own family and his own goals at the end of the day.

And Yuusaku had abandoned his family as well as his façade of recovery.

And Kusanagi now… He sounds like his doctors, his counsellors, his parents, his teachers… He’d know that, too, that Kusanagi was an adult with another perspective and there was an inevitable barrier between. Jin enjoyed something unconditional: something Yuusaku didn’t have. So did Takeru, in Kiku. So did Zaizen Aoi, in her brother, and Go Onizuka in the orphans. But where does that leave Yuusaku?

“Yuusaku.” Suddenly, Kusanagi withdraws. “I haven’t been a good friend. And Takeru feels the same.”

He stares. How is he supposed to respond to that? Why is Kusanagi even saying it at all?

“You call me by my surname even though we’ve worked together for nearly a year,” he points out and it’s true; Yuusaku even thinks of him like that. “I protect Playmaker from the shadows but I duel you as soon as Jin is the victory even though we both know full well it’s a trap and I know it’ll tear you apart. I help Zaizen irrespective of your feelings on fighting Ai, and I let you go off and fight him knowing full well it’ll end in tragedy for one of you. And Takeru was saying not long ago he doesn’t know where you live, what you like to eat or how you spend your time outside of Link VRAINS, whether you like studying or not, what your future prospects are and where your parents fit into the equation. And, honestly, I don’t know most of those either.”

“You know where I live.” He has to concentrate: on that long list, and on his own reply. His head is still fuzzy; it’s been fuzzy since the duel and no doubt the lack of sleep and food hasn’t helped.

“Yuusaku.” Kusanagi sighs, then looks more closely at him. “I do know where you live, and I also know you don’t like duelling any more than you did when I first met you, despite all the duels you’ve had since. Whatever few may have led you down that path were overshadowed by the many other battles in the war. And I know you eat too many hotdogs and drink too much coffee than is healthy and I feed them to you anyway because at least that way I know you’re eating and drinking semi-regularly. But I don’t know what you plan to do with the rest of your life. I don’t know whether you’ve even once looked at the rest of your life, or whether you ever managed to put your life back together before it broke apart again.

“Broken…” Yuusaku repeats. Yes, Roboppi was broken. So was Ai, or the Soltis he’d taken up residence in. The rest of Kusanagi’s words also filter in, in broken bits and pieces.

And maybe Kusanagi can tell he’s having trouble concentrating because he sighs again and stands up. But what now? What next?

“You need sleep,” Kusanagi says, finally. “And something to drink and eat, and it would be irresponsible to give you coffee.” And Yuusaku half-expects Kusanagi to order him to his apartment but he doesn’t. He seems to be hesitating on something instead –

And, finally, Yuusaku’s sluggish brain remembers. Today is the day Jin’s come home. So why is Kusanagi here, instead? “You should be with Jin.”

“Jin needed some time to get used to the new environment,” Kusanagi explains. “I guess me being there and more familiar was making him uncomfortable. But he knows I’m only a phone call away.”

Yuusaku knows – knew – that too. But he’s the one who chose not to answer the phone.

“I’ll drive you home,” Kusanagi says, finally. “Eat a hotdog and drink some water along the way.”

But Yuusaku doesn’t eat the hot dog. It’s too big, too bulky, too filled with Ai’s teasing voice in his ears. He only sips at the water. And Kusanagi knows that because he sees the mostly filled bottle and the untouched hot dog when they pull up at Yuusaku’s apartment. Still, he lets him go, with a reminder to go straight to bed – and that’s easy enough because bed is one part of his little place that hadn’t been touched by Ai or Roboppi.

And he doesn’t know how long it takes for him to sleep, but he does drift off somewhere in his mess of cyclical thoughts. And in his dreams, he sees Ai.

It’s not surprising, really. He knows psychology pretty well and he knows the subconsciousness picks on what people think in the period before going to sleep and feed it to their dreams. So of course he sees Ai, in his Soltis form. Of course he sees indistinguishable armies and the world cracking under the inability to coexist. Of course he sees an army of AIS – of Ais and of others as well, resembling the other Ignis.

Of course he sees himself being gunned down because that’s precisely the thing Ai says he died saving him from.

And he doesn’t know how long he watches the scenes, spiralling from one to the next until it pierces his fog-filled brain and he screams for it all to stop –

And then it does stop – abruptly – and he’s back in his room, spinning alarmingly as it is, with Takeru’s hand gripping tightly his shoulder. His face is pitying – and, of course, Takeru’s always worn his emotions on his body like a second skin, and hasn’t Yuusaku often wished he could do the same?

“Kusanagi called me.” He answers the unasked question. “He asked if I could cook. Can you believe that? I had to ask Zaizen for help.”

“Zaizen… Aoi?” He’s guessing, because he thinks the elder is more unlikely, but Aoi he could have run into at school.

School that he hasn’t attended in at least two days, he realises belately.

He also can’t bring himself to care.

“Yeah, Aoi.” Takeru leaves for a moment and then comes back with some Tupperware. “Or, rather, her maid-robot. She can’t cook either.”

Like Roboppi, then. He sees him where he’d left him: lying against the wall.

Yuusaku doesn’t take the container. He doesn’t feel any more like eating than before he slept. His head is a little less fuzzy now but that’s all. Ai is still gone. He still doesn’t know what to do or where he’s going and he’s still alive because someone else thought his life was more valuable than theirs and sacrificed themself.

Takeru sets the container down, then turns around and sits so he’s leaning against the bed. Yuusaku doesn’t bother sitting up. It’s obvious Takeru doesn’t want to talk facing him anyway, because there’s a couple of chairs in the kitchen he can easily drag over… or even space on the bed.

Or he could sit against the adjacent wall if he wants to lean on something… over there, next to Roboppi.

But of course Takeru won’t want to do that. That was cruel to think so.

“Yuusaku.” It’s the same tone Kusanagi used, he realises. Shouldn’t he feel a little patronised? He doesn’t. “I wanted to ask you something since you defeated Bohman, but we never got around to it. And I meant to ask you again after, too.”

Takeru isn’t usually one to mince words. He’s mincing them now.

Does he look like he warrants that? Does he look that fragile.

He probably does, and being in bed isn’t helping that image.

He still doesn’t do anything about it.

“What do you plan to do now?”

And that’s the whole problem. He has no plans, and everything he’d gained pursing the truth he’d lost again.

“I don’t know.” He stares at his ceiling. There are a few cracks that need plastering. “I’ve asked myself the same thing.”

“Eating would be a start,” Takeru suggests and he’s right, of course, and Kusanagi has said the same. “And exams.”

He’d forgotten entirely about exams.

“And what about your parents?” His voice is softer suddenly, gentler, as though he’s not sure he’s stepping on a landmine.

He’s not. The topic of _Takeru’s_ parents is the landline, not his own.

“We talk, sometimes.” When was the last time he’d talked to them, anyway?

He’s a skilled hacker and hopeless and human relationships and he’s known that for ten long years.

“You should talk to them.” Takeru’s head smacks the bed frame. “Oww. Okay, that was stupid of me.”

Talk to his parents about what, though? Hanoi? Ai? The details of the Lost Incident he’s finally dug up to no avail?

“I’m transferring back home,” Takeru continues after a pause, and Yuusaku isn’t surprised because Takeru’s brought up the subject before. “I’m going to explain it all to my grandparents, and Kiku, because they’ve supported me unconditionally, allowed me this chance, and they deserve to know. And unless you’re hacking into people’s bank accounts to fund your livelihood – and I wouldn’t put it past you to know how even though I don’t think you actually would – there’s someone supporting you like that too. You just haven’t looked at it that way.”

Takeru has a point. “I never understood people,” he admits. First it’s Ai, then Kusanagi, and now Takeru pulling things from him he doesn’t think about for himself. “I didn’t understand Ai either, not until he throws himself away for me.”

Takeru doesn’t ask what he means. Maybe Kusanagi has already told him. Maybe he hasn’t and Takeru is just too kind to ask. Because he might speak plainly and wear his emotions on his face but he’s also kind.

“You need someone, Yuusaku.”

He knows that. He just doesn’t know who that someone is… Or rather, he’s already lost them.


	15. Domestic (Akira)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry about the delay in posting the chapter! Got caught up in work changes. Have suddenly been whisked off to obstetrics land so that's been a bit of a steep learning curve. Lots of fun and really fulfilling though, because babies don't wait because there's a pandemic in the rest of the world (aka. the life goes on principle).
> 
> And, of course, it's the times like these that highlight what's really important to us, and that's family, friends, security in its many facets and basic hygiene. Take care of your mental health as well as the physical side of things. :D
> 
> Stay safe and happy reading everyone!

The Kings, predictably, contact him after the press release and he knows he has to stand firm with them. It’s easier, somehow, after having fought for his life against the very things the kings had driven. It’s easier, somehow, after a whole night of working for a future he’s long envisioned, long dreamed of but lacked the power to fulfil.

He really has to thank Hayami for the opportunity. If she hadn’t been the first one to stumble onto the scene, hadn’t thought to hand him a chance to achieve his ideal over informing her superiors equally, he wouldn’t have this now.

But he knows the Kings and knows they are businessmen who won’t be swayed by mere ideals.

They are, however, swayed by popularity. “We’ve lost face.” He says it plainly, perhaps, but sometimes that is best. “Between the issues we’ve had with Link VRAINS, the two times people wound up unconscious and then the way Ai took over the company, there was simply too much to hide. And we have lost nothing. The people involved in the Lost Incident are gone. Ai is gone. This way, we are victims of external influencers and so long as we demonstrate results, demonstrate we are patching up the holes in our security and our company, we have lost nothing.”

They’re lucky there are no rival companies capable to using this to their advantage, no-one who can supplant them. And the Kings also know they can’t afford to remove Akira from power: not after that press conference where he’s made himself the face of SOL technologies.

“We want results,” one says finally.

“You’ll get them,” he assures, and they will; it will just take a bit of time.

“Remember,” says another, “that Queen is also an executive member of this company.”

Which is true, and will also need to be addressed, but not right now.

“And what of Playmaker?” asks the third.

Akira wonders if they’ll ever be rid of Playmaker’s shadow… Whether even Fujiki Yuusaku will ever be rid of it. Especially now where he probably doesn’t want that mantle, those memories. And where is he know? He glances at the clock; it’s past lunch. If he’s at school, he’ll be in class with Aoi. If he’s not… who knows. Is he wandering Den City, alone? Has he jumped on a train and gone elsewhere?

His survival instincts are strong, but he knows the Lost Incident drew permanent tears onto his soul. And Ai was born from those scars, was he not? The same went for Soulburner. And Aqua… She was born from the scars in Miyu’s souls.

He remembered Miyu. That vivacious girl that always seemed like she was forcing herself to be happy. Something was wrong with that picture. He’d known it even at sixteen with a six year old Aoi clinging to his hand. He’d known it when they’d began their tentative friendship, when it had ended so abruptly with the girl’s mother storming up to him with accusations he knew perfectly well were false.

But he wasn’t in a position then to poke his nose in, and now he regrets it a little if the end result was this. But maybe that’s neither here nor there. He doesn’t know the pasts of the others, even Playmaker who spoke of his own time in captivity so frankly. Spectre said he was saved by the Lost Incident. Playmaker said he was destroyed and Soulburner was firmly in Playmaker’s court. As for Kusanagi Jin… He’d heard Lightning’s confession.

Maybe he is an idealist, in the end, but he knows what cold desire for progress can bring: the Lost Incident, and Go Onizuka. But Dr Kogami learnt regret. Will Queen learn regret, he wonders?

But Queen doesn’t call, doesn’t show up at SOL Technologies. And he’s too curious to leave her alone, so he goes to the hospital where she’s lying, awake.

“Go away,” she snaps when she sees him. “Have you come to gloat?”

“I’ve come to ask,” he replies quietly, “what your intentions are.”

“My intentions.” She barks a laugh. “I was completely humiliated.”

By what? he wonders. The press? Ai? He can sympathise a little with her; she’s haughty and proud and none of those belong in a hospital bed.

“I’ll go my own way,” she says, when he offers no reply. “SOL Technologies is done anyway, but do your best to pick up the pieces if that’s what you want.”

“You’re giving up,” he repeats.

A scowl flashes across her face. “I’m making a business decision,” she corrects, but they’re really the same thing.

But that’s fine. Akira will restore SOL Technologies as he plans.

But there’s a limit to what he can accomplish in a day and he’s well aware of his own weaknesses. Maybe that’s the difference between he and Queen, he muses. He wasn’t too proud to ask for help, even of the little sister he’d once vowed to never let suffer. But he’d learnt his lesson there: that he’d smothered her, that she was growing older and needed to fight her own battles, and that he was growing older too and needed to be able to rely on others when needed, including her. And they were closer for it all, now.

Again, he wonders how Playmaker seems to have lost far more than the rest of them, and still save mankind.

He’s home before he quite realises it, but that’s fine; he’s not planning on working anymore today (and if he’s zoning out along the way, that’s probably a good thing). It’s late anyway, past when they used to have dinner after his demotion (and hadn’t that been a pleasant lifestyle? But meanwhile, Link VRAINS had tumbled into chaos). Aoi is still in her school uniform though, chatting with their maid robot as the robot bustles over their stove and several pots.

“Fujiki-kun’s a bit out of sorts,” she explains, stepping away. The robot has things well in hand anyway, and Aoi does very little cooking. Perhaps that’s another thing he’s withheld; it was he, taller and older, who’d do the cooking when there was cooking to be done, before he became too busy and could afford a maid robot to help instead. But it had never been something enjoyable for him: a necessity for life, when take-outs were too expensive and bread wasn’t nutritious enough.

And then Aoi’s explanation processes. “Fujiki-kun,” he repeats.

“Yeah, Kusanagi-san bumped into him.”

Well, that’s a relief, regardless of what the circumstances of “bumping into him” actually are, given Kusanagi Shoichi likely has several methods of tracking his partner at his disposal.

He still doesn’t see how that extrapolates to them preparing a meal, given Kusanagi Shoichi owns a hotdog stand.

“Oh, Homura called me,” Aoi explains. “Kusanagi-san’s younger brother came home today, so he’s occupied with him and he doesn’t think hot dogs or coffee are great on an empty stomach.

“So some broth instead?” He peaks at the pots. Yes, some chicken soup, and some rice porridge as well. “And Homura-kun is…?”

“A friend of Fujiki-kun’s,” she says easily, then a little more hesitantly, “He’s Soulburner.”

“Aah.” He confesses having not given much thought to Soulburner’s identity. Playmaker had always been the centrepiece, and when Soulburner appeared it was inevitable that Playmaker would have had allies. And it had been obvious that there was at least one more person behind the scenes, providing the technical support. Honestly, it hadn’t been obvious that Playmaker himself was a hacker because he couldn’t do two things at once regardless.

He’d been guessing that he was the same age as Aoi. He was almost exactly the same age as Aoi, and living completely alone.

But Akira already tried to intrude once and it hadn’t worked out. But that was a Playmaker who’d known exactly what he wanted and wasn’t going to ignore the carrot dangling in front of his face to get it.

And Soulburner, who appeared after the Tower of Hanoi… He wonders how close he is or became to Playmaker through all this. But out of all of them, he probably understands the pain of losing an Ignis the most.

“Ni-san.” Aoi is standing in front of him now. “Fujiki-kun needs a family, and Kusanagi-san and Homura-kun are the closest, at the moment.”

And maybe the opportunity will present itself afterwards: to thank Playmaker, to offer his condolences, to see if the boy is living the rest of his life, but that time isn’t now.

“By the way, I’m helping Homura-kun study for our upcoming exams. He’s struggling with the content, and naturally doesn’t want to spend the break in school, given he’s moving back home.”

“Back home, is he?” So Soulburner, at least physically, is closing that chapter of his life.

And again, he realises how little he knows of Playmaker… and how great was Dr Kogami’s reach, to catch a kid from another city.

He shakes his head. He’s asking too many questions that don’t matter any longer. “I’m too curious for my own good.”

“I don’t think that’s true.” Aoi peers up at him. “You have a big heart is all.”

And it’s good she thinks so, because he’s going to need a big – and strong – heart to drag SOL Technologies out of the trench it’s currently in, after all.


	16. Priorities (Emma)

Emma is momentarily confused by Aoi’s reply. She’s forgotten, she realises as she mulls over it later, that Aoi is still a student. That Playmaker and Soulburner too, likely, are still students. That even Revolver and that Spectre character he hangs out with are still students – or at least student-aged.

As Aoi had said, she’s young enough to find a nice and equally young man to settle down with and maybe have a baby or three, but that’s not the type of life she’s been living. And even if she realises, once their paths split at the end of this road, that she wants to stay attached to the Zaizen family after all, it’s hardly a typical romance tale.

And what’s blown her mind more than Aoi raising the subject is Kengo having been the one to have raised the subject with Aoi.

But she’s fine where she is, for now, and SOL Technologies and Link VRAINS are going to take a while to sort out.

As for Aoi… Aoi has exams and as much fun as it would be to teach Aoi more hacking, she should let the other girl focus on those. Aoi’s ambition isn’t to become a bounty hunter, after all. She’s more likely to wind up working for security… and if SOL Technologies had a competent security team, they wouldn’t need to keep depending on Bounty Hunters.

There’s an advantage of having links to people unaffiliated with the company but lack of security isn’t one of them. Rather, she muses, they’re best used for weeding out corruption – or facilitating it. Pitting ambitious player against ambitious player while playing both black and white on the chessboard. But when was the last time she took sides against Akira? Against Playmaker?

She’s almost exclusive now and she laughs at the thought. It’s probably lucky she’s alone, feet up on her couch.

And she’d only texted to see if Aoi needed a ride anywhere.

Emma won’t be much help with exam preparation anyway, unless Aoi wants her to hack into the school systems and she’s too honest for that. She doesn’t need that sort of help anyway.

The round-faced glasses boy on the other hand Aoi’s offered to tutor might, but he also looks too honest for that.

Emma sighs and puts her i-pad away. Akira’s gone home for the day as well, and Link VRAINS is still closed. Sure, she could go for a drive somewhere but where would she go? There’s nothing interesting going on outside of the Soltis fiasco, as far as she knows.

But it’s not a bad idea to just kick back and relax, she thinks. Her shoulders are so tense and now that she’s focusing on her body, her feet are sore as well.

A massage, she thinks. Or a nice soak in a sauna, or both.

And she’s got no plans for tonight so why not?

And they’re relaxing. She lets her mind drift into a fog and her body soak, but she’s always been a restless person and neither saunas nor massages last for long. That’s part of the reason she’s a bounty hunter, she supposes. Too antsy for secure desk jobs. Too fun riding duel boards and driving just over the speed limit while weaving in and out of traffic.

She hasn’t managed to convince Aoi that motorcycles are far better than dusty old cars. She never managed to convince Akira either.

As for Kengo, she doesn’t need to convince him about cars; he hates them. She doesn’t know where he sits on motorcycles though.

And that gives her the whimsical idea to call Kengo.

He picks up, though he half expects her not to. He snaps though, predictably. “What it is?”

“Just wanted to chat,” she replies easily, enjoying the fresh hair by the pier. It’s almost deserted, but she’s not the only one with the same idea. There’s a teenager down at the other end. Someone about Aoi’s age, she thinks.

“Chat,” he repeats, like the concept is foreign to him. “I’m busy.”

“With what?” she asks, curious.

He pauses, like his first assertion was simply reflex and not the truth. “Nothing,” he admits, after a bit. “I don’t know what to do with myself, suddenly.”

“I’m bored too,” she replies. “Link VRAINS will be out of commission for a while and I’m not working permenantly with SOL Technologies.”

“Won’t you consider it?”

For someone averse to the idea of simply chatting, he’s jumped into it rather quickly, she thinks to herself.

“Consider chaining myself to a company?” She snorts. “Too many rules and restrictions.”

“I suppose that’s one way to look at it.” And he sounds satisfied, for whatever reason.

Or maybe that was his goal all along. “You could have just asked me why I became a bounty hunter.”

“I could have,” he agrees, but he still doesn’t ask and she’s not about to hand over the answer on a silver platter. “But you’ve still got lines you won’t cross.”

“So do you,” she returns. “They’re just different lines and different methods. I’m the type to recon. You’re the type to create traps and catch your prey. Naturally, we need a bit of both to be bounty hunters, but we all have our specialties and our goals in the end.”

“We’re also all criminals,” he points out.

“Aah.” And maybe that’s something too. “You don’t want your baby sister getting arrested one day.” It’s possible, but stopping now isn’t going to improve her odds until the statue runs out. She’s not patient enough to wait for ten whole years for that, and who know what the international law is. “Riding on the edge of danger is it’s own kind of thrill.”

“My sister’s an adrenaline junkie.” He sounds almost bewildered at the idea.

And she laughs. “You called me your sister.”

“Not the first time, Emma.”

In her defence, she’d been thinking of more important things at that time.

“What about the Zaizens?”

“What about them?” It’s starting to get dark. She glances again at the other boy; it doesn’t look like he’s moved at all. She covers the receiver and calls to him. “Hey? You want a ride?”

He looks over slowly, blinks at her, and turns back.

Apparently not, then, but there’s something in his face that takes away the temporary annoyance at being brushed aside. That’s someone who’s lost and grieving, someone who doesn’t want to talk.

She’ll give them the courtesy, then, of an empty pier.

“I’m driving home,” she says to Kengo, because she knows he’ll be angry if she drives with the phone. That doesn’t mean she takes the same precautions with others, but there’s no reason to push when they’re only chatting, getting a tiny bit closer.

“Drive safely,” he replies, and hangs up. It’s not quite a farewell, but it’ll do for now. And she drives as safely as she can, because she knows full well that caution is its own kind of detriment and hugging the speed limit is the best way to go.

And as she drives, she wonders. Sure, she’ll continue her bounty hunting once Link VRAINS opens, and she’ll continue helping Akira rebuild SOL Technologies from the shadows and training Aoi. But what else? Her day to day work was basically more of the same and she knows full well it’s not sustainable, and her part time studies still have a ways to go (and she can’t speed them up or else she’ll give away her hacking background) and who even knew if the work that spread from that would be interesting at all?

Once she’s parked the motorcycle and is back in the house, she checks her phone. There are text messages from Kengo and he’s evidently been reading up on her.

Which she’s surprised at, given that she thought he’d been well up to date with her already. But she was going to have to have a word with him about privacy. They were both adults, after all, and professional rivals.

But in the meantime… “Game debugging? Really?”

But it’s not a bad idea, in all honesty. Whether it holds her curiosity long enough to get her through her programming studies is another story.

But Kengo works in the programming industry as well: a normal desk job with Blood Shephard slipping through the gaps.

And games are a slightly different vein from hacking, but she can’t deny she likes games otherwise she wouldn’t like Link VRAINS, wouldn’t have wanted to duel Playmaker for the sake of it, wouldn’t have had that small thrill of satisfaction of having tricked Ai… even though Playmaker had seen through it all, anyway.

Oh, she really wants to meet Playmaker one day, but who knows if it’ll actually happen. And who knew if Playmaker even liked games, anyway.

Who knew if she’d like designing digital games. Worth a try, anyway. People try new things when they’re bored, after all.

“Any suggestions?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Not sure how the above happened, actually. Emma just spontaneously decided to be try her hand at being a video games debugger. Oh well; I couldn’t get a good hint of what she did in her not Ghost Girl life but she doesn’t seem like the sort being deliberately criminal or out of necessity at this stage. There isn’t anything hinted in her backstory either, unless there’s a period of time between her father passing away and her gaining her financial independence (because she looks close to her current age in that flashback…). So made it up on the fly and here we are. Not sure if it’ll wind up being plot relevant once we get past the epilogue and into the plot, but we’ll see. At least the siblings are having a normal conversation.


	17. New Day (Go)

Go and the children enjoy the pancakes. So do his manager – ex-manager, he recalls, given he’d fired him. But he’s still here, and still concerned. And so is the kindly matron he’d wished had been old enough to be there in his time.

But she’s here now and that’s all that matters. They’re there for the children now.

And he said he would be there as well. He’d left them. But now he’s back and he’ll stay.

But it’s not that simple and all the adults in the room know it. The children are eventually sent off to school or play and, complaining, they go. Go remains at the table.

“Go,” his ex-manager starts.

Yes, they’ve talked a bit after the incident with Earth, but things are a little different now.

“It’s over,” he says. That’s really all the explanation he can give. “I don’t know how – probably Playmaker – but someone’s defeated Ai.”

It must be Playmaker; it was unfathomable that someone else could have done it. Go had drowned in that deck. He had duelled Revolver before, too, and Soulburner, and he was sure they also would have drowned in that deck. Revolver, as far as he knew, hadn’t lost to anyone but Playmaker, but Soulburner lost to Bohman.

As for Playmaker… Thinking about Playmaker succeeding where he’d failed again wasn’t as grating as it used to be. The desire for revenge has been sapped out of him, just as the desire to be the best has.

But the desire to improve himself, to shine so that the children’s eyes sparkled in his glow… That desire was stronger than never.

His manager smiles. “Then we’ve reached a happy end to this chapter.”

And maybe he’s said all that aloud, but he won’t ask. He still has his pride, after all. One could even argue that’s his cardinal sin: that pride.

“Then will you return?”

And that was the contention point. Last time, he hadn’t been ready, and he’d duelled Ai because he owed Playmaker – and, in a way, Zaizen Akira – that much. In part, he’d also done it to atone, and to free himself from those chains.

But now… “I think I will,” he says, “when Link VRAINS opens again.”

“It doesn’t have to wait.” And there, Go stares at his ex-manager. He should really apologise, and fix that, but the man is talking again. “There’s a duel tournament in the plaza. Don’t you think it’d be a nice thing for the kids?”

It certainly would, whether as an exhibition match or as an actual contendor. It sounds like it’s been set up to placate those going stir-crazy about not being able to enter Link VRAINS. But that’s fine. That works for him. Costumes are allowed to for people who want to protect their identities but Go doesn’t have that. Go doesn’t need that.

“That’s fine,” he agrees, before he adds. “Thank you. And I never apologised for putting you through what I did. Or firing you.”

“Well.” The man grins. “You technically didn’t fire me. You never stopped paying my salary.”

Oh, was that how it was? He hadn’t thought to check.

But that’s a relief, even if it doesn’t change the words, the meaning, or what came after it all.

Even if he’d fired the man – even if not technically – with good intentions, they’d spiralled into something else.

But they were smiling with relief now, and the matron chatted about how excited the kids would be to see him duel in person rather than on television or projections, and how she was sure several of them would want mini-Go costumes… and was she hinting he help her sew? He’d never sewn anything in his life.

They both laughed when he mentioned that and proceeded to give him a crash course. And it was painful – he kept on poking himself with the, hopefully sterile, needle – but it was fun. This was back to how it used to be, how they acted the big family even if none of them were bound by blood.

And it erases nothing but that doesn’t matter. He learnt that the hard way, and he was in a good position to have not needed to. After all, he grew up in a rough and tumble world before gaining fame. And he saw, second hand, what had destroyed Playmaker.

Instead, he reaped the rewards of somebody else’s suffering and he didn’t even know which child had suffered in the creation of Earth, or Aqua for that matter.

He still doesn’t know, but it’s not his place to find out. It’s his place to make amends to people he may never see again, and others who he sees every day.

“You know,” the matron comments, later. “Some of the older children want to learn how to duel.”

They always do, and he always humours them. Sometimes, Makoto visits and helps out too…

And, suddenly, he wants Makoto there as well. Not because he’s been involved – he has, just a little bit with the Another Incident – but because Makoto is closer to him in age and yet not an adult: that comfortable in between he might be able to make something of.

Makoto comes, though he comes armed with books as well as spare cards and Go realises he’s pulled the other away from study. Still, Makoto waves it off. “It’s not often you ask me to come,” he says, instead.

And that’s an over-exaggeration. Go doesn’t think he’s ever asked… and maybe that’s a flaw to correct as well. “I just wanted the company,” is what he replies, though.

Makoto is more observant than that, though. His bounty hunting activities inside Link VRAINS may not have been broadcasted, but his absence was plenty noticeable. “You’ve changed,” he says, eventually. “You look like you came to an understanding about something and you’ve matured from that.”

“Are you saying I was a child before?” he teased.

“You were,” Makoto admits freely. “Not that it was a bad thing. Stubborn to a fault but that was one of your selling points as a Charisma Duellist, wasn’t it?”

And that was true, though it hadn’t needed to be that way. And the stubbornness regarding his duelling style wasn’t necessarily a bad thing. The bad thing was the dramatic change that resulted when he couldn’t accept his own defeat.

“But I had to change, in the end,” Go sighs. “And I took it too far: changed too much, thinking I had to win and always win, thinking I had to defeat Playmaker.”

Makoto looks bewildered now but Go doesn’t explain the rest.

“What about Playmaker?” Makoto asks, finally. “That man was looking for Playmaker.” He means Dr Genome. “And then SOL Technologies put a bounty on his head. Now what?”

“Who knows?” Go shrugs. “He’s human just like the rest of us.”

And wasn’t that the truth he’d blinded himself to?

“You know,” he says, after a pause. “I met Soulburner, and he told me I’d been one of his heroes. Me and Blue Angel. Our efforts hadn’t been useless after all.”

And too bad he hadn’t used that as his saving grace instead of another nail in his coffin.

“Soulburner and Playmaker,” Makoto muses aloud, “and Go Onizuka and Blue Angel. All heroes of Link VRAINS, and how many more do the public not know about?”

“A few,” he replies, because he thinks all the people who Zaizen Akira called are likely vigilante heroes of Link VRAINS in their own way, even if a fair few of them were also instigators along the way, like the Knights of Hanoi.

He doesn’t elaborate though, because that’ll mean exposing an ugly part of himself to Makoto.

He doesn’t need to elaborate though. Makoto has always been better at reading people.

“It’s all over, now.” He says it partially to convince himself.

“So we’ll see a new and improved Go Onizuka in VRAINS?” Makoto asks.

Go explains about he tournament, all the while thinking he likes that phrasing. New and improved is precisely what he needs to aim for.

“Will you enter, too?” he asks. He hasn’t been keeping up with the local duel tournaments. Doesn’t even know if Makoto had picked up a deck after the Dr Genome incident. Doesn’t know how it had affected him in the long run.

“Yeah, I think so.” He twirls a card, from the pile they’re sorting into makeshaft decks. “It’s not in Link VRAINS.”

And that’s when he realises Makoto hasn’t been back. How many more Another incident victims didn’t go back? How many went back and were swept into the second wave? How many of Bohman’s victims didn’t go back?

Would Soulburner and Playmaker ever go back?

“Do you think they ever duel for fun?” Makoto muses. “Playmaker and Soulburner, I mean.”

Go doesn’t know. He asks himself the same thing.

“Maybe they’ll like the idea of a stage outside of VRAINS.” Or maybe they won’t. Who knows. “I hear Link VRAINS is going to be completely remade, and there’ll be safety features run over with a fine tooth comb.” He says it nonchalantly, as though it’s not important to him.

Go isn’t fooled. “I’ll be keeping an eye on things,” he promises. “So when Link VRAINS reopens, will you come with me?”

“We’ll see.” Makoto looks away, but he’s got a small smile on his face.

They speak no more of it. That’ll be when the time comes.


	18. Inconclusive (Kengo)

Kengo isn’t sure why Emma calls, or why he humours her. Maybe that’s what normal siblings do. Still, it somehow ends with him exploring less criminal options for hacking and programming skills. It somehow ends with him suggesting she pursues debugging as a temporary job until she finishes her degree.

Though, talking to her, the degree is more a cover-up than actual future prospects. He still thinks he’s missing something but some people just like the thrill of living life at the edge. But if that’s the case, he knows Emma’s already started the process of settling down. She just hasn’t seen it yet. Just won’t admit it yet.

He’ll prod her then. That’s what older brother do, right?

And in the meantime, he still has his desk job to fall back on while Link VRAINS is closed. Yes, pockets of time open up but he’s still working on the Soltis as well. Zaizen Akira has his own team working on it, but he’s happy to pay a token out of pocket for Kengo’s individual research as well. He’s even asked for something specific, something he won’t have the research team explore.

“I want to be sure the Ignis won’t come back,” he says. “I want to be sure it’s all over.”

And he knows Kengo is one person who’ll never take the Ignis on board, even if they were offered on a platter lined with gold.

He was tired of the tedium earlier – and maybe that was part of the Ignis’ plan, to make the Soltis code so long and convoluted that most of the time was spent in clearing out the trash. But Emma was a nice direction. Perhaps she timed it. Perhaps she didn’t. Either way, he’s had his break now, knows Emma isn’t tearing across Den City in her motorcycle ignoring the speed limit, and he can get back to his little side-job.

He’s chopped the code into a quarter, now, but he’s saved the rest of it anyway just in case. The parts not necessary to the programming, and the parts that are. He’s sure the people at SOL Technologies will just delete it. He should, by all rights, just delete it, but something nags at him and he’s not sure why. He knows the Ignis is petty enough to waste all their times but maybe he isn’t. Maybe there’s another message hidden in there.

When he thinks that, he thanks himself for the foresight of having saved some of the data on the locks and traps left at SOL Technologies, as well.

And the data on over a hundred SOLtis, with two different varieties…

No, three. He frowns at the one he currently has open. This one’s been rewritten; there are soft traces of it everywhere. Data scars, if he had to call it something. He can see traces of people and duels: Soulburner, Playmaker, Revolver, the Zaizen siblings, Go Onizuka, the Knights of Hanoi, Queen from SOL Technologies…

He wonders if this is the original. If, he can dig out the scraps and restore the memory data, he can discover what happened in that duel between him and Playmaker.

He knows Zaizen Akira isn’t asking for this. That Emma wouldn’t do this. Emma wouldn’t even search for Playmaker on SOL Technologies’ request, citing that she owed him, so he doubted she’d invade his privacy in such a manner. But he has no such qualms, and he needs confirmation more badly than Zaizen Akira seeks it.

Or maybe Zaizen Akira has another way of getting it. He was somehow able to contact Playmaker and his cohort. He must have known a way to contact them. He must have a way to contact him now.

But Zaizen Akira is just an employer, and Kengo doesn’t particularly want to be able to contact Playmaker. He can gain more from this, he thinks: programmes that are finite, restricted and don’t surprise.

But the Ignis are none of that and that’s the problem. Their programmes self-update and change and he can see traces of that all round.

And then he finds it, late at night when his eyes are burning and the dregs of coffee in his cup have gone cold. But he finds it, and settles back into his chair to watch the big reveal.

And he frowns, because that’s an idiot of an Ignis, at the end of the day. After having spent so long with humans, he doesn’t think they can exceed his expectations? Doesn’t think Playmaker, for all his duelling and winning against the odds, had anything to do with that himself?

Is it simply that arrogant, he wonders, or can it not grasp the possibilities beyond the box?

Still, it’s an ending. The Ignis says it’s destroyed itself and all its copies. Playmaker didn’t back down from it, in the end. He’d make a good Bounty Hunter, if that was something he sought to pursue in the future. But looking at that look on his face… Who knew? He’d give it a fifty-fifty shot if he was a gambling man.

He isn’t. He’s a man who played to win and played with the favour of the odds.

But he ponders on the conversations, on the duel. The duel itself is beyond what he’s capable of – he knows that, even if it grates – but the conversation is essentially between two children. It’s funny, actually, given Playmaker began as a vigilante working alone and rose to popularity by inadvertently saving Link VRAINS in his crusade. But Playmaker is still a child, just like Zaizen Aoi is still a child. But Zaizen Aoi grew up with a bit of help from Emma, and Playmaker’s regressed.

Or maybe he’s being too hard on Playmaker. Maybe he’s just experiencing a proper childhood and interactions with other people for once.

But that doesn’t matter, given the way it ends. He knows enough about the Lost Incident to know the backstory, even if it has nothing to do with his own hatred of AIs. Playmaker, he thinks, should have hated them too. Playmaker and Soulburner too. It’s almost a variant of Stockholm Syndrome. He wonders, then, where it leads when the victim finally does away with the perpetrator?

Though, of course, the true perpetrator is the creator of Ignis, the arrogant human beings who thought they could escape their own mortality. He can’t help but feel sorry for those children, though. Children who had their lives twisted by AI through no fault of their own. But now that they’re involved, they can’t let it go.

Revenge is a festering, ever-growing cancer and trauma is the same. He knows this. He knows it well but the Lost Incident kids aren’t his concern anymore, if they ever were. As long as this chapter closes, as long as Playmaker and Soulburner and the knights of Hanoi don’t appear in Link VRAINs again, as long as someone doesn’t get it into their head to try and replace humanity again…

He sighs, and shuts down his computer. He got what he wanted from the memory data but the code itself just goes on and on, like there’s no end. The old, the new –

He freezes, then hurriedly reboots his computer. How could he have looked over that? How could he have been so blind? The time of the duel, the time of Ai’s defeat, was yesterday night. That girl from SOL Technologies found the deactivated SOLtis not long after. Playmaker had been there, reeling from his victory. Likely, Playmaker had dashed off as soon as he heard or saw her approach. Likely, she’d gotten such a poor glimpse of his shadow that she wasn’t sure if he’d been there at all.

But the Ignis, if he deleted himself at the conclusion of their duel, shouldn’t have any data beyond that. Shouldn’t have seen Hayami staring down at him. Shouldn’t have any changes to the code…

And he won’t know that until he compares it to the copy he took earlier in the day.

He does, when the computer finally reboots. It’s subtle, but there are changes.

The code is changing, slowly but surely.

Is it like a snake’s tail still flopping around after it’s been severed from it’s body? Or are the Ignis immortal?

He’s picked up his phone without realising it. He drops it again; it clatters, noisily, in the empty apartment.

Not now. Now yet. He’s jumping to conclusions.

But now the idea that it might not be over yet won’t leave him alone.

He makes himself a new pot of coffee and starts checking over all the other data. He won’t be sleeping anyway. Not until he knows, one way or another.


	19. Reaching Backwards (Ryoken)

He doesn’t drop by Café Nagi, even though he knows he’ll see Kusanagi Shoichi there, and likely Soulburner as well. He might even see Playmaker.

He’s not looking for any of them, though. He’s not looking for anything. Rather, he’s feeling the cool sea breeze on his face and hoping they’ll have a night free of storms.

The weather forecast says clear skies, but it always feels strange, at the end of long battles.

Ryoken, of course, wouldn’t have been content without knowing exactly how it all ended. And he can’t, in good conscience, call Fujiki Yuusaku a friend. He squandered that chance, ten years ago.

He wonders if Yuusaku has accepted that. He wonders if Yuusaku even thinks of extending a hand of friendship anymore. They had Soulburner colouring the situation, of late. Soulburner: the welcome relief. A representation of what Playmaker should have been: angry, blaming, not looking for a saviour who hadn’t really saved him at all and regretted the path it led to.

Because he still regretted how it led to the disgrace and loss of his father, how it had led them all to war. He didn’t regret setting those children free, but maybe there was a better way.

And he knows Playmaker is still thinking that now, even with blatant proof in front of his face and no reason to pursue that line of thought any longer. Or he hopes there isn’t.

Because Ryoken knows his father and knows the Ignis, he knows total destruction of something capable of regenerating is very difficult to achieve. An Ignis might be able to do it, but they might be like humans in that respect as well. Not all suicide attempts are successful, after all. And it’s not as though there is a precinct for AIs committing suicide.

Because that’s what it is, in the end. The dark Ignis effectively used his own partner as a suicide weapon. And he wonders how he didn’t see it coming. It’s the opposite of Lightning. No, the opposite of Windy – but Windy was manipulated as Lightning.

No, that’s not right either. It’s a cross between Lightning and Windy, in the end: wearing someone as a puppet, versus killing them because they’re of no use.

As long as that’s the end of the story though, it no longer matters. Ryoken thinks he’s closed that chapter for himself as well, with that duel from Soulburner. If watching over the network is sufficient repentance, then he’ll do that for the rest of his life. He has the funds to manage it, after all. Has the obscurity to manage it. As long as he makes the occasional visit to his home and to the supermarkets of Den City, he’ll be fine. As long as Taki stays out of public sight, they’ll be fine. As long as Playmaker and his allies don’t suddenly decide to expose his other colleagues, he’ll be fine – and he doesn’t think they will. They’ve got every reason to support Soulburner’s demand – and Soulburner has every reason to want him to continue the same.

Though, until SOL Technologies get it back up and running again, nothing of the sort will happen. Perhaps he should send Aso or Dr Genome to SOL Technologies to assist in that. If there are secrets still buried, or any new ones that begin to brew, then they’ll have an easy backdoor in. And he wasn’t naïve enough to give the company his full support after where his father wound up, and neither were they.

Spectre, of course, would never go, and Baira was too much of a risk.

Poor Baira, he thinks, glancing to where she sits on the deck, with her laptop. She risks small trips – has to risk – because humans aren’t meant to live forever on the sea, but she can’t return to her work as a doctor. She’d be scrutinised too closely, caught too quickly. Link VRAINS offers anonymity. The world of data, of networks, of behind a screen offers anonymity. But she’s forced into it now, because Playmaker caught her.

Clever of Playmaker, really, and they’re lucky Faust had covered his tracks after seeing how she’d been uncovered. Then again, that had been a risky play, as well: risky for Playmaker, risky for Faust. That had been Ai’s doing, he surmised, in the end. Playmaker had seemed confused, Faust said.

But Playmaker had also been blinded by his desire for revenge. And now… what does he call it now, Revolver wonders? It’s not Stockholm syndrome, because Ai wasn’t the captor. But it’s an unhealthy dependence, all the same.

And pity he’d seemed more lively the longer he spent with Ai, as well.

Humans crave company, in the end. Revolver knows this: he was a lonely child with his father working long hours, and later incarcerated. But his father’s colleagues had looked after him, had become his colleagues later on: big brothers and sisters and, later, a family. And now they spent most of their time on a private yacht out at sea.

And if they tire of the sea, Zaizen Akira’s idea of a plane in long flight wasn’t too bad either. And there’s always space, as well. The world when data links them is both frightfully big, and small.

A plane flies overhead as he thinks this.

Ai had threatened to crash the plane. Pandor seemed pretty sure he was bluffing.

But Pandor is not an Ignis. Revolver knows he’s still no match for his father’s abilities, still no match for their self-improvement, and their free will, and their foolishness. He’s seen his father’s simulations, after all. He’s run his own simulations. He knows Lightning did as well. He suspects Ai did as well. That’s their fallacy – and it’s a fallacy he shares: the need to know, to calculate, to predict.

But duels aren’t things that can be simulated, or predicted. Especially not with skills like his and Playmakers and Bohman’s, who can pull new and unforeseen cards from the data storms, who can turn the tide of the duel from the brink of defeat.

He wonders if the data storms will still blow, now that there are no Ignis to fuel them. If that’s an issue, they can easily replicate it, or create something similar. It’s not that important.

What’s important is the finality they haven’t proven yet.

“Revolver.” Spectre has come up to the deck. “SOL Technologies has recovered all the data from the SOLtis.”

“Excellent,” he replies, because now they can begin analysing it and digging out the remains of the Ignis. They deserve a funeral: the closing of the casket to free them all from the past. And he also needs to be sure that Pandor will be contained as she thrives.

Ai scorned it. He justifies it, given humans are in cages as well: cages of mortality and morality and bonds of friendship and love.

“Spectre.” Spectre, he realises, has almost gone back inside but he stops and turns back. “I don’t think I ever asked you what you thought of the Ignis?”

“I think they’re all arrogant,” he replies. “Those who side with humanity seemed to do as though offering us a priveledge, while those who scorn us think we’re not worthy of such things. Either way, they look down on us. But I said as much to Lightning.”

“You did,” Revolver agrees.

“I also lost.” Spectre shrugs; he doesn’t seem disappointed. “Honestly, I’m more upset about losing to Playmaker. Lightning and I are of similar minds. He only didn’t want to admit it.”

“Lightning was Kusanagi Jin’s Ignis,” Revolver points out.

“I suppose that makes Earth mine.” Spectre shrugs. “He is nearly the opposite of me, as far as I saw. Straight-forward, shadowing his mentor… Oh wait.” He laughs. “I suppose that makes you my Aqua.”

Another person might be unnerved, but Revolver knows Spectre, and appreciates his forgiveness and his loyalty.

“You told me when we first met, that you needed something to ground you,” he says. “The Lost Incident was that for you: the same thing that uprooted five other children, because you never had a home or a purpose or a place to beyond.”

“I belong here,” Spectre says simply, and however it happened, Revolver is glad for that fact.

He can’t erase the suffering of five other children so easily though, and he can’t erase the fact that Spectre denies his own suffering in the face of his salvation. He’s not looking to either, though. That’s the difference between humans and Ignis: they recognise their limitations, but they also believe in infinite potential. But humans can make the same mistakes Ignis do. That’s why they will be the dark knights of the network now, and it’s a risky balance they’ve hopefully learnt and experienced enough to uphold.

And hopefully he’s simply too suspicious, too cautious, too restless after chasing the Ignis for ten long years to believe Playmaker has rid the world of his quarry.

Speaking of Playmaker, he wonders when an appropriate time will be to collect his card again. Certainly not now because, although he doesn’t agree, he can’t deny the chance for mourning a lost partner.


	20. Unconditional Live (Yuusaku)

Takeru makes a convincing argument. Or rather, Yuusaku simply hasn’t generated a counter-argument. But he doesn’t really want to stay in his apartment. It’s too full of shadows. And he doesn’t really want to stay in Den City either, for the same. Kusanagi will be preoccupied with Jin for the foreseeable future. Takeru will be returning home. Even if they weren’t, they had other focuses, other obligations, and the thing that had been uniting them all was gone.

The thing keeping him in Den City was gone. Maybe his parents had been right to move away, to insist he come with them. Maybe they’d also been right to allow him to stay when he’d refused, when he’d said he needed the chance to close the door on his past.

He’s closed that door now, hasn’t he. Except Ai blew a big hole in the wall. Still, staying in Den City isn’t going to fix it and Takeru’s visit has left him with a homesickless the likes of which he hasn’t felt before.

Does that make him a bad son, he wonders? He hasn’t missed home in five years. Five years when his parents finally gave up on their house and moved away, when they offered him a little apartment when he hadn’t followed them.

Takeru is right. He’s relied on his parents and not thanked them for it, not kept them up to date, not given them the courtesy of regular phone calls, of visits, of simple thanks and love. He hasn’t given himself the courtesy, either, of thinking about the future.

Or that’s a lie. He had; it was just impossible now. He’d planned on shaping a world where AI and humans could live together in harmony. Now he had lost that foundation, and trying to create something like the Ignis again would be the height of foolishness, given he knew firsthand how they were born.

He also knows it was wrong: inhumane, depriving of basic rights and hardly a simulation of humanity at all. A basic RPG game would have been better.

A basic RPG game might be better.

He blinks at his wall. Link VRAINS transfers their consciousness into data, into avatars of their own choosing, their own design. It was a study of humans in an environment where their physical bodies were less of a limitation, but there were still limitations and they were still humans. People died in the earlier incarnations of virtual transfers. People fell into comas in more recent ones.

He doesn’t know comas but he knows how that feels: to feel trapped, to wonder if there’s light at the end of the tunnel or no way out of the loop.

Except now he’s got options. Stay in Den City or go visit his parents? Or is it even called visiting when it might up a permanent move? And return to Link VRAINS, to duelling, or distance himself from the network. Detract himself entirely, or find some halfway point where he can still programme and hack and research AI without stooping to Dr Kogami’s levels.

He laughs; laughter peels from his lips and bounces off the empty walls of his apartment. Yesterday, he had no options. Now, he has too many.

He looks up train times anyway. He knows he has to do that. And he sends Kusanagi and Takeru a quick text letting them know his intentions, because he knows he has to do that as well.

He hovers at the unknown number, then leaves it alone. He doesn’t need to watch his back so closely anymore, even if it’s an odd feeling to not have to. So what if Playmaker is discovered? Playmaker’s work is done and he’d never wanted to be a saviour to begin with. He just got in too deep and couldn’t back out. Didn’t have someone – a Kusanagi Jin – on the other side to pull him out.

He leaves the house with his keys and his duel disk still strapped on his arm, and his school bag. He hasn’t packed for a trip. He hasn’t packed at all. Just left like he would leave for school every day, and he’s even walked partway there even though it’s too early and he has no intention of going to school anyway. It’s only ever been a necessary nuisance anyway. But he checks the envelope with his parents’ address, and where he’s scribbled a few train times, and changes direction. He’s in time regardless; waits a good fifteen minutes for the train, and then waits another half hour on it.

The countryside zips past. They’ve been so close, yet so far.

And the city is entirely foreign to him. The train station overlooks a beach and at least that rules out one direction. He still crosses to the other side, to the road parallel to the railway line, and where it curves into an intersection, and other streets.

He almost laughs at himself again, but the stoic mask has slipped so tightly on his face, he can’t. His facial muscles barely twitch. He simply stands, looking at the roads – but he doesn’t know them, doesn’t know which way to go. He has the address, and the train station, but he didn’t look up how to connect the two. He has his duel disk –

Which connects to the internet, of course. How, he wonders, is he forgetting such basics? Still, he searches for the address, searches the streets around him to work out which direction he’s in, and then sets off.

It’s a long walk, but it seems to pass by in no time at all because before he’s ready, he’s standing in front of the address and he doesn’t know what to do next.

Put a deck of cards in his hand and he’s on autopilot, but he’s lost the skill of socialisation and he never quite got it back.

Luckily – or perhaps unluckily, the decision is taken out of his hands. He stands for too long, probably, or else the timing simply works out that way. But the door opens while he stars at it. Someone backs out, talking to someone else. Says farewell. Locks the door. Then turns around and sees him standing at the gate.

He stops short.

Yuusaku isn’t doing anything of note to stop short as well, but he would have if he were.

His father looks older, he notes. He’s got grey hairs and age lines and he didn’t have either of those before. He also has a beard and it changes his face somewhat.

It almost makes his father look like a stranger, but not totally unrecognisable.

And he probably looks different too. It’s been five years, after all. Five long, rapid and messy years that have ended in a tangle of bandages and half-healed scars.

“Yuusaku,” his father says.

And then the door is opening of its own accord and his father is tripping down the front steps to hug him. Yuusaku doesn’t react in time – doesn’t need to react in time – before he’s enveloped in that warm hug. And it’s different to Kusanagi’s: he doesn’t know why, at first, but then he gets it. It’s like Takeru told him. His parents aren’t bad people. They never were, and they didn’t deserve the five year absence he ungraciously gave them.

And, five years of absence later, they love him anyway.

He grows even warmer when his mother wraps her arms around him as well. Warmer still with her warm breath in his ear.

“Welcome home, Yuu-chan.”

And not even Ai has ever been that familiar with him, so he accepts it: accepts that warmth… at least for now until he needs to deal with the baggage that he’s brought along for the ride.


	21. Part 2 - Eyes (Yuusaku)

A week passes like a breeze. His parents usher him in and wrap him in blankets and warmth and, when he offers them little, they give back chatter about their lives. His mother still teaches art at the local high school and his father’s bounced through several retailers before settling into an old-fashioned games shop. There are several board games set up in the house and he’s not sure why, because it’s only his parents.

For a moment, he thought he might have missed a younger sibling but that doesn’t appear to be the case. Nor have any guests come by in the week he’s been here. But there’s the shadow of something or someone there. He wonders if that’s his shadow, that his parents took with them when he refused to come.

Some are games that can be played with two people. Most ask for at least three, if not more.

And when they ask if he wants to play, he shrugs. Why not? They’re not digital. They’re not duelling, even though duels can be played on mats. If anything, the closest thing he’s done before is solve Ai’s puzzle to find the Cyverse cards: his deck, still sitting in his duel disc after that final duel.

If he fades out in the middle of playing, in the middle of talking, in the middle of eating his parents’ warm home cooked meals, they say nothing.

Perhaps they know that, eventually, the words will spill out. Or perhaps they’re afraid he’ll disappear again if they push.

But because they don’t know, they don’t judge. Or, else, they know just enough. And he gets a feel for what they know and what they don’t, in the way they talk, or shy away from certain topics, in the way there’s Playmaker memorabilia tucked away with family pictures, with how his recent school picture has somehow made its way onto the mantle as well. Like how there is a duel mat and a tin of cards amongst all the other board games in the house, and what even looks like a few of his old cards when curiosity bids him to have a closer look at them.

He has them spread out still when his mother comes home. She smiles when she sees him at the table: a strange, bittersweet smile.

“Games are strange things, aren’t they?” she comments, turning away again. She goes into the kitchen. Puts a kettle on to boil, from the sounds of it.

That’s another thing he’s realised… or maybe he’d just forgotten it. Neither of his parents seem to drink coffee. They keep very little of it in the house. They drink teas instead: a vast array of teas and they all taste soft and sweet in the aftermath of Kusanagi’s coffee.

“Strange in what way?” he asks, because yes, they are strange in how different they are but how they all seem to function to bring people closer together.

“Just like that,” she replies, and maybe he is talking out loud, or else she knows him that well despite five years apart. “I thought it was odd, at first, that they chose duel monsters, but now… not so much. But that doesn’t make it any less cruel.”

Her eyes are dark and moist, and the same shade of green as his own, that he’d kept for his avatar. It had been a foolish move in retrospect and he’d had to work that much harder to cover the similarities, to make sure no-one looked too closely at him – but still, the Zaizen siblings had known immediately, when they saw him with Kusanagi.

Kusanagi also hadn’t thought to hide his own appearance… or maybe he couldn’t. That would have undermined the trap they’d sprung.

Maybe it was the way the world said that enough was enough.

“Oh, Yuu-chan.” She sets two cups of tea – chamomile again; he recognises the smell – on the table, and then embraces him again. He’s getting somewhat used to this. His mother’s always been tactile but she held back, after the Lost Incident, like he was made of glass. And they’d never bridged that gap.

Time, it seems, bridged that gap for him, for them.

“We watched,” she continues, “your father and I. “We knew the moment you refused to leave Den City that you would search high and low for answers and you wouldn’t stop until you got them. We could only hope you wouldn’t get yourself into trouble along the way. And then we saw you on the broadcasts in Link VRAINS. Saw you fighting the Knights of Hanoi with such vehemence they must have had something to do with it. And saw you fight that man – that entertainer – who seemed to just want a strong fight, and I thought for a moment you might have been enjoying it again…” The tears spilled over. “But you fought that girl and it was ruined. And all the fights afterwards, I don’t think I saw that smile of yours again. And how many did we miss?”

“I don’t know,” he replies, because he doesn’t know which duels were broadcasted and which weren’t. He only knows Kusanagi combed the internet with a fine tooth comb to delete all the recorded data, anything that could hint to his identity. That didn’t stop people’s memories and reconstruction, though. That didn’t stop the people chatting about him, or creating their own memorabilia: a mix of fairly close to his original avatar to nowhere near. That didn’t stop people trying to imitate him as well, but at least they’d gotten the idea it was pretty dangerous by the time he had a bounty over his head.

And he can think about all that a little more easily now. It’s the unfamiliar environment, he thinks. It’s being surrounded by his parents, and this new life they’ve built and the space they’ve left for him, and the way they seem to be in the house even when they’re away. It’s the almost comforting feeling of being watched over, looked after, that he’d lost when he lost Ai and Roboppy, and that he’d taken for granted until then.

It’s the distance. It’s the time. It’s the slightly unsettled feeling of being in a new bed that’s keeping the dreams away at night. But how long will that last, he wonders? How long before the cracks grow into fissures and break him apart?

His mother tilts her head at him. Her hair is still in a plait, still wound and tied at the end by a ribbon, and the whole thing tumbles off her shoulder when she does. It makes her face look smaller, somehow. Softer. “SOL Technologies is getting back on its feet, and you’re here,” she says. “That means the door to the past has closed, so to speak.”

“Has closed,” Yuusaku repeats, and that’s a good way of saying it because he didn’t intend at all to close the door himself, not in the way it shut.

And now that it’s gotten this far, he has to say it, even if the air seems to get heavier in anticipation, even if his mouth dries and something in his chest twists and cracks and lets out a flood of emptiness again.

“They created Ignis: beings with artificial intelligence meant to replace humanity. Six for six children they kidnapped and forced to duel, and mine became my partner this year as we fought Hanoi and SOL Technologies and other Ignis.”

Her brow furrows as she processes that. “That little black thing that was in your duel disk?” she asks. “That programme from SOL Technologies that they cited as the reason for having a bounty on your head?”

He nods. His fists tighten. His knuckles whiten.

“Created from your pain, your fear, your suffering,” she continues, and she sounds like his old psychiatrist then, except there’d been nothing tangible back then. “Created, also, from that inner strength you’d held on to, and your love.”

“My love,” he repeats, and he’s not sure about that.

But she is. “You would cry in your sleep,” she explains. “And you did tell us a bit. That boy you said hadn’t been rescued by the others. That boy you’d met, that had offered you hope when you thought you’d had none. That boy we’re forever thankful for.”

Ah, he hasn’t told her yet that the boy in question is Revolver. Maybe she doesn’t even need to know.

“And, I hoped, the family you wanted to come back to. But then you stayed and I wasn’t sure – “ She wrings her fingers together. Their cups grow cold. “But you came back.”

“I gained closure and lost it before I came back,” he replies, but maybe – for the first time, he thinks – maybe it had to happen that way. “The only thing I could cling to was answers, was revenge – and then one thing led to another and led to us saving Link VRAINS, fighting for a world where one species doesn’t need to eliminate the other… and in the end I eliminate Ai with my own hands.”

“Ai,” she repeats. “Ai means love.”

But he hadn’t chose that name because of its meaning. He’d chosen it because of its pronunciation.

“Does it matter?” she asks. “Our subconsciousness play a greater role in our decisions than you might think. But it doesn’t sound to me like you intended to eliminate him.”

She uses the same word as him.

“I didn’t,” he admits, and here he can talk to someone who won’t judge, who won’t say he had to do it. “I was backed into a corner. I thought I could have found another way but Ai outmanoeuvred me. He’s been doing that all along.”

“Why?” And now her voice is sharp. A mother’s scorn, he reflects with some surprise – and he’s not sure why he’s surprised. He heard that before, when he’d woken up in the hospital, when the police weren’t able to give a satisfactory explanation, when they eventually abandoned the case altogether.

And why indeed? Hasn’t Yuusaku been asking the same question himself? Hasn’t the same question clung to his head, his heart, and he’s dragged it along with him.

But now that it’s his mother asking, he thinks he knows. Ai who initially fought for humanity, who gave up the other Ignis to fight for humanity, who made the mistake of looking into the future, of simulating the possibilities and coming up short…

“He says he did it to save me. But he gave up on hope.”

Because humans don’t know probabilities, don’t know what the future holds, and can cling to what others would call a fool’s hope.

His mother’s face softens again. She unwinds her hands: reaches out, and takes one of his in both her own. “Then what will you do you with that sacrifice?”

And that’s not the way he’s been asking himself that question, but maybe he should. What will he do now that Ai is gone, is what he’s said. What will he do now that he’s closed the door to his future with his own hands… But this is different. This is a responsibility he bears, and someone who wasn’t able to find hope, who’s offered it to him instead.

“I’ll find a solution,” he replies, and this time his voice is firm. He remembers how brittle it became when arguing with Ai, when arguing with Bohman, and now… It only takes finding conviction to change that, to give him back a stage to stand on.

He’s always been a performer. He knows that, knew that when he crafted Playmaker and the quiet unassuming student who rubbed Naoki Shiima the wrong way.

Though that didn’t succeed in getting him off his back, for some reason.

But neither Playmaker nor Fujiku Yuusaku are great at socialising, even if they’re good at reading people through duels.

“I’ll find a way for humans and artificial intelligence to live together.” Because they’re all hypocrites. He knows this. Others just avert their eyes to it. They depend on computers. On the network. On data and machines and stored information and calculations they can’t do or are much slower at themselves. Even people who claim to despise them like Blood Shephard… He was lying the moment he stepped into Link VRAINS and who knows how long before that. But they live alongside a virtual world with or without Link VRAINS and he’ll learn to navigate it, to understand it, and to ensure humans don’t self-destruct with it. Because that was what he planned to do with Ai, for Ai –

And just because Ai isn’t here, doesn’t mean he should give up on it.

His mother is smiling again, but this time it’s bittersweet. “You’ll always have a home with us,” she says, as though it’s a foregone conclusion he’ll leave.

Maybe it is, but right now he has no intention to go and he says as much. Still, she takes their teas and reheats them, takes that soft but striking gaze along with her –

And there’s still something, someone, some sensation and he doesn’t understand it until he sees his duel disc, lying innocently on its side.

But it can’t be, can it?

He’s seen Ai everywhere in Den City, though. Why not in the duel disc that was his home?


	22. Conclusion (Revolver)

Yuusaku goes to his parents. Revolver follows his journey, follows him remotely to the front door. It’s not hard, given the empty streets and the way today’s society has a camera in every corner.

He follows Yuusaku’s duel disk as well, but for an entirely different reason.

And it takes him a while – takes Doujun Kengo even longer – but he sees the seeds of his worry take fruit. And maybe he could have been happy for a few weeks if he hadn’t noticed, but he’d promised. And maybe he couldn’t have kept himself from turning over every piece of coding anyway.

And he’d spent seven years uncoding the Ignis. He knew them almost as well as his father, now. Perhaps he’d even surpassed him. But in the end, it wasn’t him who’d destroyed them.

In the end, they hadn’t been destroyed. Not entirely, anyway. Shreds of the dark Ignis remained, and it was growing. Did it mean it would form into a functional being again? Who knew. But it was growing faster than Revolver was comfortable with, and the restrictors he’d applied to Pandor’s programming refused to take hold.

If only it was as easy as turning a flawed Ignis into a Pandor, but it wasn’t. And though Pandor’s restrictors meant she would never turn against humanity, she also couldn’t integrate herself into them, and support their evolution. She wasn’t made with the same purpose in mind, and though her ability to improve was similar, her base left much to be desired.

It mattered not. She functioned well in the task he had for her, and he wasn’t trying to save humanity anyway. Perhaps he’d lost faith in them. Perhaps he simply wasn’t that sort of altruistic person. After all, at sixteen he was one of the most infamous cyber-criminals, even if only a few select individuals knew his true identity and age.

He’d been careless revealing hints to Playmaker, but maybe he was fine with their dynamic the way it was. At least until things came to an end.

_Am I… almost happy things haven’t ended yet?_

Perhaps, like Playmaker, he too would have been lost if the Ignis, if that incident, vanished without a trace.

Except, unlike Playmaker, he’d taken the care to verify that this wasn’t the case.

And if the dark Ignis was rebuilding despite his efforts, then where were the other five. Faust and Baira were searching; he had to leave it to them. Spectre was ashore and wouldn’t be back for a few days, and Genome was the least inconspicuous after him so he’d gone as a contractor to SOL Technologies. He might find the earth or water Ignis while he was there, or other pertinent information. And even if he found nothing, he could at least leave a small, undetectable, back door should the company grow too big for its boots again.

Revolver wouldn’t let it become the abomination it had been for the last ten years, even if Zaizen Akira allowed it.

But that means he has to find a way to permanently neutralise the Ignis, something even the Ignis themselves have failed to do.

And why? Because his father created them as a self-renewing, self-growing programme. Because he created them from the trials of children who had an infinite well of hope and infinite potential. Because he created them from children who didn’t know their own limits, who didn’t know what limits where –

Who still tasted despair and hopelessness and cages and limitations, and all that had been embodied in that final duel, that final sacrifice.

Or so the dark Ignis had said. He said he sacrificed himself so the human he’d been born from – so Playmaker, so Fujiku Yuusaku – could live. He’d seen futures where humans and AI could not live together, and he’d precipitated that conclusion for them by making himself out to be the villain. Ai, who’d chosen to fight against his fellow Ignis so his partner could attempt to build such a world, had turned out to be the biggest obstacle in the end.

But just as a child easily abandoned dreams, they also stubbornly persevered. Was this a small sliver of irrational hope? Or was it simply a mindless regeneration.

They’d find out in a matter of days, by his reckoning. And if he can’t stop it, he can trap it.

His lip curls. He remembers Playmaker doing the very same thing. It was one of a series of events that led to their bittersweet reunion.

_Playmaker, could we have been friends ten years ago?_

It doesn’t matter now, though. And he has Spectre, instead. Spectre who is fetching supplies for them.

He sighs, and thinks. Where’s the safest place for the Ignis? And how can he create a lock that will keep them bound? If only they could be isolated in such a away they were as good as destroyed… but that came with its own dangers. Under their watch was better. But the dark Ignis had evolved frightfully fast, so much so that Bohman had been modelled off duels with Playmaker. On the other hand, it hadn’t been until the dark Ignis had left Playmaker’s side that its machinations against humanity had begun.

Unfortunately, the easiest place to lock the dark Ignis up again is Playmaker’s duel disk. He’d only have to adjust Playmaker’s code and, given several of his own programmes exist in that duel disk, he can do it remotely with relative ease. The water Ignis, too, can be contained relatively easily within the sphere Lightning had employed… but if he’s going to unite one Ignis with their human, he should consider reuniting the others as well.

Of course, he can’t unite Windy… and he doesn’t even know if Lightning’s machinations can be repaired. Or if Lightning himself can be repaired: Lightning, the first Ignis full of holes that was abandoned instead of improved. Lightning, who’d mimicked his creators and, in doing so, broken his host and misunderstood pain with pleasure. Lightning, who hadn’t been able to handle being singled out, being incomplete, who hadn’t been able to overcome simulations who said he had no future with the human race.

And he’s going to give that to Kusanagi Jin to handle? That sounds like a terrible idea when worded like that.

He chews his pencil head as he thinks. He can trust Spectre with Earth, of course, and maybe it’ll be a good chance for Spectre as well. Soulburner will likely hunt his boat down (with help, of course, given he lacks the technical finesse to pull it off) if he doesn’t return Flame, and leaving Aqua in the cage would be too cruel. Zaizen Aoi had managed Aqua just fine the last time around, and who knew what Sugisaki Miyu’s views on the Ignis were. The two girls see plenty of each other, anyway. Zaizen Aoi can feel her out on that issue.

He can put Windy in the cage. There’s probably no point in putting Lightning in a cage of his own design. And that leaves Lightning. He can take Lightning himself but what would be the point of that? If the Ignis need their partners to curb their destructive potential, then how could a broken boy just starting to heal curb Lightning?

Maybe the older brother can hold on to him, instead.

Of course, he can’t let them go unsupervised. Can’t let them plot to destroy humanity once again. He pulls up Playmaker’s programme – and it was a pretty decent one; it had successfully held Ai for several months before Windy, and then Ai himself, had hacked himself out. But Ai had been able to manipulate data remotely even prior to that. Revolver needs to put a stop to that as well – or at least a watch.

Children in a cage won’t grow, after all. Hamsters in a cage fight for survival and that is all.

But he’s not a scientist. He’s not putting a bunch of hamsters in a cage and seeing which one reigns supreme. And maybe part of him feels sad, feels guilty – or maybe he can’t let Playmaker dig himself into a hole of despair when it isn’t over after all.

He can justify it however he likes but the end result is the same.

Still, he would rather the Ignis had simply remained in their graves.

And once he locks them into place, he can work on deleting them again: deleting them once and for all. Because despite the valuable resource they’d been, they’d destroyed far too many lives – and he’s a child who’s seen his father’s dream fail, after all, and has dedicated himself to cleaning up the mess.

_Playmaker, Soulburner, Blue Angel… Looks like I’m going to be your enemy again._

But that’s the role of the vigilante he’s taken for himself since seven years ago.


	23. Instigation (Kengo)

Of course Revolver knows how to contact him. He’s done so before, called him out to Link VRAINS and duelled him. Lightning has done so as well.

He’s upgraded his security, of course, but Revolver’s either stepped up his game or left a backdoor. Either way, there’s a message from him. Even if all it’s doing is confirming what he’d already known.

He wonders what took Revolver so long. If it took him nearly a week of comparing codes, it should have taken Revolver – who not only had been involved in the original creation, but also had the advantage of more data – at least half as long. And as he scrolls through the rest of the message, he realises the reason behind the delay. Revolver had tried and failed to stop the process. Was now focusing on circumventing it.

And he was going to give the Dark Ignis back to Playmaker. That’s the height of foolishness.

Which means it’s up to him to stop the evolution of that code before it reaches the point of manifestation. And that’s probably Revolver’s intentions, but he can’t help but dance in the palm of his hand this time. He won’t accept their return so blatantly. Revolver may have other priorities but not him.

And now that he isn’t alone in this endeavour, he’ll be even more effective.

He calls Emma. Emma who is surprised at being called instead of being the one to call, but she sobers up quickly when he explains why.

“Ai and Aqua were kind of cute,” she says, disguising her regret in a seemingly off-hand comment, “but I get what you mean. We don’t need more tragedies, and maybe it’s too soon for such drastic change.”

He resists the urge to snort at that; it’s always too soon for drastic change as far as humans are concerned. Somehow they make do anyway. And maybe they could have adapted if forced to. Maybe, even after the bloodbath Ai talked about, the few humans left over would have found peace.

It was always easier to find peace with smaller groups, after all. Less likely for there to be a rotten grape in the bunch.

Still, Emma is helping, and it’s hard to get the Zaizen siblings on the job either. The three of them were a formidable team back in the day, even if none of them had admitted it. They’d had different methods, different moralities – and they’d conquered every foe they’d stood against. One could even argue that recent events were no different – but it hurt his pride to admit they’d have been screwed over without Playmaker.

Playmaker who probably wants his Ignis back right now, but Kengo can’t afford that sliver of pity, won’t give him that sliver of pity. _You’re better off without it, now._ At least there was a chance, in absentia, of putting demons to rest.

How could one put demons to rest if they lived on in one’s duel disk?

But as much as he tried – as much as they tried (and he even used a few of his precious sick days to buy more time) – the code evolved.

It was getting close. Too close.

And then there is another message from Revolver. _Any luck?_

 _No,_ he replies, and he’s not even sure the reply will go through because Revolver is as paranoid as they come and hiding one’s IP address is one of the basics of hacking. Or maybe he’s managed to set up an untraceable account.

Or maybe it’s just worth the risk, at least until Kengo needs to expose him. Because even if SOL Technologies – if Zaizen Akira – has given up chasing him, there are others: politicians, businessmen, other business, who still bray for his blood. And they’ll pay a pretty yen for it.

The Ignis is a personal issue, though. And maybe he’ll come to understand Emma’s own stance on Playmaker in the process.

But in the meantime, he’s had no luck and neither has Revolver.

 _The other Ignis are reforming as well,_ said the next message. _I told you only the Dark one to see if you could find a way to stop it._

He can replicate it, speed the process up – as if he’d one to do that, but all attempts at stopping and deleting the code is thwarted.

_You’ve brought a couple more days, though._

He had? Well, that was useless… unless –

_I’ve completed locks. How long they’ll last though…_

He grimaces at the taste of cold coffee and gets up to make a new cup. So Revolver has completed the locks he talked about… but with the Ignis constantly self-improving, how long before the lock is no good?

Pandor is a piece of work, but she’s got limiters built into her very core. The Ignis didn’t come with such things, and restricting fully developed adults is harder than influence malleable children.

That gives him an idea. Memories is the name of the game, perhaps: memories, all the things they’ve learnt since forming in the world. There’s ways to see them. There’s also ways to hack them as they saw with Bohman. He’d put on too good an act to fool Playmaker, otherwise.

And he’s left the memory data alone after seeing that duel against Playmaker.

But now he can expose all of Ai’s machinations. Even if the memory data is useless in influencing Ai, it will no doubt influence Playmaker. He’s out of time to find the delete button, but until the dark Ignis redevelops its defences, he can do this.

Painstakingly, he records the memories, one after another. First is the duel itself, of course. Then, scrolling back, there are other duels, other conversations. He sees how that duelling house robot came to be – and how ironic that it was Playmaker’s as well. Playmaker’s innocent robot housekeeper dragged into the war between Ignis and humanity. He wonders idly if Playmaker has family, if they managed to avoid being dragged into it.

But that’s a foolish notion, he thinks afterwards as he remembers the Lost Incident. Of course Playmaker’s family is involved: in the past, if not in the present.

And then they go beyond the battle against the dark Ignis. He sees the tall SOLtis standing at a grave. Sees five symbols on the grave marker. It doesn’t look like anywhere in Link VRAINS. Perhaps that’s the Cyverse world. He flags that file anyway, in case there is still a way to reach it, still something to be found there.

And, a little further back, he finds the simulations. Hundreds upon hundreds of simulations. He sees one lone Ignis and human attempt to guide humanity. He sees how premature it is, how scared people are and how that fear grows when the Lost Incident and all the terrors of Link VRAINS are exposed. He sees Ai make promises he can’t keep. He sees how the copies of the Ignis stumble, how they aren’t perfect in preventing new tragedies. How, eventually, the world governments decide they need to be destroyed. How one high school boy thinks he can stand up to them and is shot down like a bird in a flock. How, that, somehow, winds up the trigger for an all-out war.

That boy must be Playmaker, he thinks. He pauses the recording, zooms in and tries to clear up the image. Still green eyes: the same green as Playmaker. The body shape is harder to work out with the uniform in the way. That’s the same uniform as Zaizen Aoi’s school. And the hair… is that blue and red? No, blue and –

He curses and disconnects the portable hard drive as static fills the screen. The Ignis’ defences are restored, it seems. He won’t be able to connect to the network with that drive, anymore.

He’s got some things, though. Whether he can do anything with them is another story.

His monitor screen goes dark, except for the symbol as it searches and purges his history, his coding, his work. But everything that worked is in the drive and he clutches it with both hands, as though the Ignis can reach into a screen and grab him.

Didn’t Playmaker say something similar, when they first met?

But the screen eventually fades, with no disembodied arms reaching out for the hard drive.

He sighs: first in relief, then irritation, and calls Emma again. “We’re out of time. The Ignis’ defences are restored. Pull your data.”

“Damn,” she grumbles. He can hear the sound of something being ejected and something else typed. “Thank goodness for portable drives, these days.” There’s a pause and a shuffle, then she adds: “I’ve let Akira know too.”

“Good.” Because Akira may have hired him once, but he’s been Emma’s client far longer than that. Client, ally, friend, whatever those two wanted to call it.

And as for the Ignis… Revolver’s messages are gone as well. He hopes the other is keeping a sharp eye on his Ignis-related data or else they’ve lost their consolation prize as well.


	24. Den City Stage (Go)

The tournament is upon him before he can blink. To his pleasant surprise, Makoto shows up at the orphanage that morning and they head over together. To his surprise, there are a few other students, wearing Makoto’s uniform, also present. Nobody he recognises, but then again, he wouldn’t recognise most of Makoto’s classmates.

There was that one boy who’d been at the hospital with Makoto during the Another incident… Fujiki Yuusaku, was it? But their paths hadn’t crossed again and Makoto had looked surprised that he was there. “Fujiki-kun keeps to himself,” the other had shrugged. “I don’t know if Shiima-kun is his friend or that’s just Shiima-kun’s general friendliness at play.”

And Go had shrugged it off, though a part of him had wondered if it was possible that that boy was Playmaker. He hadn’t pursued it, though. Knowing Playmaker’s real world identity was redundant, after all; back then he’d been chasing the challenge, the thrill of having someone stronger than him, someone who he can banter with on an even playing field. And when the sting of defeat got too strong to bear, it was to find Playmaker so he could defeat him so decisively he could prove to himself and Playmaker that he was the stronger of the pair.

Knowing Playmaker’s real world identity hadn’t mattered. And now, when it does matter a bit, it’s probably too late. But he can’t see that distinct blue hair anywhere, anyway. He can see a boy with two-toned brown and white, though, standing next to a brunette girl.

“Oi, Zaizen!”

Zaizen Aoi then, he muses, as he watches another boy run up. “Shiima Naoki,” Makoto supplies, from beside him. “I doubt he’s competing, though. He lacks the confidence, usually.”

He’s right; Shiima is not competing. But he is talking to the gathered duellists in like uniforms. Perhaps they are part of some club?

“Duel club,” Makoto explains. “They’re fairly low key; I’m surprised to see so many of them here.” Though he also looks a little pleased. He doesn’t go over to them, though.

Doesn’t stop Shiima from coming over when he spots him though. “Wow,” he whistled, staring at Go. “Who knew you were friends with the great Go Onizuka? I’m a huge fan. Of you, and Blue Angel too. Though my all-time favourite is Playmaker…”

Go sighs, but the comment doesn’t sting as much as it used to. “My favourite’s Soulburner, myself,” he interrupts the tirade smoothly.

Makoto stares at him. So does Shiima, for a moment, before he grins. “Soulburner, yeah. He’s so cool with his fire monsters, but still, I’m fated to be Playmaker’s sidekick –“

Thankfully, the MC interrupts them. How did this kid get it into his head to be a side-kick?

There’s a small speech about providing platforms for duels and entertainment while Link VRAINs is prepared, then speeches from SOL Technologies and a few other influential figures. Go declined his own speech; he’d duel but that’s all he’d do.

Blue Angel waves from her spot on the stage, but she doesn’t make a speech either.

And then the tournament proper kicks off. The bracket is revealed and Makoto wanders over to his side of the stage while Go stays and waits. The tall boy in the uniform directs a few of his classmates, then stays behind with Zaizen Aoi and the two-toned boy. The others have all gone to Makoto’s side. And there are, of course, others: casually dressed, a few dressed up like him, a few more with masks hiding their features as though they were cosplaying as their Link VRAINS characters.

At least this time no-one’s masquerading as Playmaker. Though they would have had a hard time duplicating his deck, he supposed.

Eventually, the clusters of duellists organise themselves and disperse as well. The first group start duelling, and Go watches them, looking for anything interesting, any familiar cards.

He watches Makoto’s duel with all the attention it deserves, of course. And he’s proud when Makoto wins and advances to the next round.

In his bracket, there’s not much interesting going on. The tall schoolboy – the club president, he assumes, loses in a landslide to a man in a white suit. Zaizen Aoi and the other boy are later on in the bracket.

And, finally, it’s his turn. And he blinks in surprise to find Zaizen Aoi standing across from him. “Didn’t expect the little sister of SOL Technologies’ CEO,” he comments. He didn’t expect Zaizen Akira to be as mellow as he’d turned out to be, after all. Showed how much the executives had been driving his actions when they’d first met, he supposed.

She shrugs. “You might think otherwise when you see my cards,” she replies.

But it’s his turn first, and he knows that despite what surprises she has in store, he has to stay faithful to himself and his cards. He can call out The Thunder Ogre this turn, he reflects, but that’s too hasty. He wants to see what Zaizen Aoi has to offer.

So he defends. He sets things up so even simultaneous attacks will lead him to a link summon next round.

Then she blasts his lifepoints with her Marincess’ special abilities and he realises what she meant. He can’t say it, of course: there’s too many people watching, too many people listening in. But he supposes it’s safe enough for her to flaunt a cyverse deck in public, given few people will have seen it. But if she’s using Marincess cards, that means she’d had the water Ignis at some point. If she’s using Marincess cards, that means she’s Blue Maiden, was Blue Girl… was also Blue Angel.

Zaizen Akira’s little sister one of the idols of Link VRAINS, huh. He wonders who orchestrated that little manoeuvre. But her eyes when she regards his defence are strong and stern. Coral Anemone destroys one Gouki. He adds another to his hands but he knows her mainstay is effect damage – that hasn’t changed from when she’d use her Trickstar deck – and he doesn’t have much to defend against that.

Not much except shaving of her life points with attacks. A strong offence against a strong defence.

But she’s shrewd. She’s calculating. They parry well, together, and he thinks it’s a shame the two biggest Charisma Duellists of Link VRAINS pre-Hanoi hadn’t had a chance to go all out together.

“Blue Angel’s not duelling today?” he asks, instead.

“Oh, she’ll duel the winner.” Zaizen Aoi smiles and gestures at the stage.

A hologram? he wonders. Or is someone else dressing up like her? Though that’s probably a smart way to avoid having to switch back and forth between the two personas.

“And you go to Makoto’s school, right?”

She nods. “Not in the same class, though. Shiima-kun and Fujiki-kun are, though.”

“And where is Fujiki-kun?” The look she sends her is a little sharper, now. “He visited Makoto in the hospital. That’s how we met. And you wouldn’t have mentioned him unless he was somehow relevant.”

“Aah.” She hums. “He’s on family leave,” she replied. “He is technically a part of the duel club, though he hardly shows up. But they’re the only two from their class. I’m the only other freshman.”

So the boy she’d been standing next to wasn’t a freshman? He’d certainly looked to be.

She attacked his Gouki defence again. He activated its effect.

“I discard Ash Blossom & Joyous Spring to negate that effect.”

Well, then. No-one’s been gutsy enough to do that before. He grins. “I’ve got plenty of Gouki monsters left.

“I suppose you do,” she replies with a smile of her own. “But I also have lots of Marincess in my graveyard to block your attacks.”

And it would be an embarrassment to lose here, especially since Zaizen Aoi isn’t dressed up as Blue Maiden, but he knows he’s been outmanoeuvred. If it was just blocking his barrage of attacks, he could have broken through in another turn or two, but the effect damage… He’ll need to find a way to deal with it, while being flexible enough to not block his deck up with cards he won’t always be able to use.

“Good duel,” he says in the end, and shakes her hand.

She frowns at him a moment, before shrugging and smiling. “Looks like your head’s in the right place,” she says. “You know where you need to grow, right?”

And, of course, she’s been in the same place: after losing to Playmaker, to Spectre, to Soulburner, to Bohman…

Kindred duellists, and isn’t it a shame they hadn’t duelled before now.

“Rematch, once VRAINS reopens?” he asks, offering a hand. “Once I figure out a way around that effect damage?”

“My pleasure,” she replies, accepting the handshake. “And might I recommend you pay attention to my next duel as well? I’ll be duelling Homura-kun… and it’s kind of the same thing, really.” She frowns again. “I hope. If he’s playing his usual – oh, no.” She dashes off, but the next duel’s already started and Homura’s on the field, duel disk activated.

He understands what she means when he reveals his Cyverse cards… but given the reaction he causes, wouldn’t it have been smarter for him to have simply dressed up as Soulburner instead?


	25. Rematch (Takeru)

Zaizen Aoi suddenly makes a beeline to him. He can’t hear her though, and she’s stopped by the officials. He can’t think why though, not until he summons one of his Salamangreats and realises the crowd is suddenly silenced.

 _Right,_ he realises. _Salamangreats. Cyverse. I’ve basically declared I’m Soulburner._

Well, there’s no going back now, even if his opponent is staring at him, jaw dropped.

The MC is the one who kickstarts things again, finally. “I don’t believe it, ladies and gentlemen! But that’s one of Soulburner’s cards! Is this Soulburner’s true identity?”

In the crowd, he sees Aoi facepalm.

But nothing for it now. “Yeah, I’m Soulburner.” He forces a grin, though it’s hard to when his lack of foresight crashes on top of him.

And, of course, he’s wearing his uniform as well. Probably a good thing he’s leaving the city soon, elsewise the news stations and the public are going to descend onto him like vultures.

Better him than Playmaker, though. Especially now.

But he came here to duel.

Aoi’s idea… kind of. Rather, it was the duel club president’s idea and he’d just been tagging along with Aoi. It had been… interesting. Shiima had been complaing about lack of Yuusaku and some other boys had teased the pair until Aoi’s glare silenced them. But they didn’t know the connection: didn’t know that she was Blue Angel or he was Soulburner –

Oh dear. He hopes he doesn’t wind up blowing her cover as well. But, when he sneaks another look at her, she is doing a good job of looking suitably surprised next to Shiima’s ranting.

And he’s counting himself lucky school is out and he’s not going back, otherwise Shiima will never leave him alone. That’s going to be a pain for Yuusaku though, he thinks, knowing Shiima has seen the pair of them together before.

But Yuusaku is also quick at explaining his way out of potentially incriminating situations. Otherwise it wouldn’t have taken so long for the Zaizens to realise who he was.

But he can’t think about that now. He’s got a duel to win.

And speaking of…

“Hey!” he shouts at his opponent. “You going to make your move or what?”

Said opponent is still looking a little shellshocked the unmasking of his opponent, but manages to make a decent turn regardless. Pretty sturdy, actually, if only it didn’t hinge on The Sanctuary in the Sky and if only Heatleo’s ability didn’t remove it from the field in the next turn, leaving The Agent of Force – Mars with no attack points.

Still, he couldn’t win that turn due to all the extra life points his opponent had added on, but that would only last so long against his firepower, especially without the protection of the field spell.

And he’s right; he wins the next turn with two face downs still stuck on the opponent’s field. “Divine Punishment,” he admits, offering a trembling hand to shake. “A deck that needs the right cards in the right places is a pretty bad match for yours.”

“Yeah, guess so.” He grins. “My deck’s good at tearing castles and fortresses apart, so to speak.”

Though perhaps he stuck his foot in his mouth, because before he can meet up with Aoi again (who will likely scold him for his lack of foresight, and then scold herself for the same), they’re into the second round and he finds himself staring her down across the field.

She visibly sighs. “You’re an idiot,” she shouts across. “Couldn’t have told your club members first?”

Which is totally unfair, he thinks, given he’s not technically a part of the duel club to begin with, but Aoi is probably trying to protect her own identity as Blue Maiden at this point and he’ll give her that.

“Wasn’t planned,” he replies truthfully. “I just don’t have any other decks and didn’t think too much about it.”

Namely because he tossed his old cards – the cards that had gone through the Lost Incident with him – off a pier, but he wasn’t going to tell her that.

And given she’s using her Marincess deck, she doesn’t have a whole lot of room to talk either. Although he doubts any of her duels using it have been broadcasted – against Haru, against Bohman, against Ai.

His duel against Bit and Boot was broadcasted, if nothing else. The downside of rushing to Playmaker’s rescue, he supposes.

But there’s no helping that now. Especially since here’s a rematch they’ve been pleasantly surprised with. Though it’s a shame she can’t use her Trickster deck.

Actually, she can. He remembers the prize: a duel with Blue Angel.

“What are you grinning for?” Aoi frowns.

“Thinking about a rematch with a certain someone,” he replies. “Sorry, Zaizen. I’m going to need to beat you here.”

But despite what he says, defeating her and her Marincess deck isn’t easy. He manages it in the end, but he needs to pull out his deck’s strongest players to do it. And maybe the reason he wins in the end is because he and Flame had the chance to evolve their deck and she and Aqua did not. Certainly, part of the reason Playmaker is undefeated is his ability to constantly update his deck with new Cyverse cards.

She takes it gracefully, though the look she gives him suggests she’ll want to talk it (and his oversight) over some more when they get a chance. “The truck later tonight?” she suggests.

He nods. They better update Kusanagi as well, though he thinks he saw his truck in the square somewhere earlier. No small wonder, either, given the amount of people in the square today.

He suddenly remembers Ai’s teasing when he’d brought a burger to thank Kusanagi and flushes. Hard to reconcile that with the Ai who’d defeated the Zaizen siblings, and who Playmaker in turn defeated.

But in the meantime, he has a tournament to win. And win he does though he struggles with the Slyvian deck a boy who looks remarkably like Spectre plays. He doesn’t call the other out on it though. Nor does the other call him.

So everyone has more than one deck except him, he sighs to himself. He didn’t think the whole hiding his identity thing through all too well, and now he doesn’t really need to do it.

And then he’s facing down Blue Angel and her Trickstar decks, and it’s the sweet rematch she’s been waiting for. And despite having been using the Marincess deck lately, she’s made new improvements to her Trickstars and the way her cards recycle makes it harder for Heatleo to wipe her field. Last time he’d been impressed that she’d patched up the hole in her deck: adept at causing effect damage and swarming, but overall low attack strength. But she’d played predictably then and fallen neatly into his trap (which was saying something, because he’s not exactly what one would call a trap master). This time she’s not only made changes but she’s mastered them.

And, thanks to that earlier duel with the Marincess deck, she knows the ins and outs of his deck and he doesn’t have Flame cheering him on.

He doesn’t regret his loss, though it stings like even the most respectable losses do.

And now there’s another subject for discussion for when the crowd finally disperses and the pair double back to Café Nagi.

And Kusanagi has coffee and exasperation waiting for them. “You couldn’t have warned us?” he asked.

“It was an accident,” Takeru admits sheepishly. “I honestly didn’t think I’d wind up exposing myself when duelling for fun. I don’t have any other decks, you know.”

“Is that so?” Aoi says. “I have another deck – aside from the Marincess and Trickster cards, of course – that I use with the duel club. Of course, they also asked why I was using another deck, but they don’t know they’re Cyverse cards so I just said I was trying out a new deck.” She shrugs. “And I know Fujiki-kun has another deck as well.”

“In his case, though, his deck is barely usable,” Kusanagi shrugs. “Basically beat-stick monsters and generic magic and trap cards. Fairly easy and cheap to make, but given he doesn’t exactly duel for fun, it does the job well enough.”

“I need mine slightly more functional,” Aoi smiles, “and in any case, I have access to a large variety of cards through my brother.” She takes a deck out of her pocket and fans it out.

“Butterflies?” Takeru asks. He hadn’t expected an insect deck.

“Of course, effect damage is still my trademark.” And apparently it’s the running theme of three of her decks. “But it’s not an issue, especially since people saw Blue Maiden duel and are less likely t associate her with someone they saw lose in the second round.” She shrugs. “It’s a pity, though; Aqua and I didn’t get many chances to duel together with that deck.”

“Your deck would have likely evolved,” Takeru says, in part to voice his own theory and in part to offer her some bittersweet comfort. “Even though we don’t have a deck strengthening ability like Yuusaku’s, we were able to evolve our deck as well as our strategies during our duels.”

“She said I did a splendid job,” says Aoi quietly. “I would have liked to keep winning with her deck, though.”

“Then you’ll just have to keep duelling with it,” Kusanagi replied. “After all, unlike Takeru here – “ And he claps Takeru firmly on the back to illustrate his point. “Only a few select people know who where the Marincess deck came from and we’ll have bigger problems than a secret idol’s identity crisis if they start spilling their secrets.”

“And me?” Takeru asks.

“Well,” Kusanagi shrugs, “luckily you’re not as high profile as Playmaker, but people are going to hound you for a while. We can only really damage control.”

“Guess so,” Takeru sighs, “and it’s a good thing I’ve got you guys to help so I don’t put my foot in my mouth again.”

“We’re not following you back to your hometown,” Aoi points out.

“Not even Flame is.” He stares at his duel disk; it’s strange, he thinks, not seeing Flame’s little body peeking out or hearing his comments. He’d been an unwelcome intrusion at first, but he’d really grown on him in the end.

Aoi, too, looked at her duel disk where Aqua had resided for a short period of time, and Pandor for an even shorter period.

And he might be imagining things, he thinks, but he can almost see Flame’s red eye peeking at him.

He blinks. Of course it’s gone. It couldn’t have been there to begin with. But the echoes Flame’s left behind aren’t going to go anywhere in a hurry.


	26. Another Chance (Aoi)

Takeru is staring at his duel disk. Missing Flame, probably. Aoi can’t blame him, because she misses Aqua too. Still, their bond is something else: something like Playmaker’s with Ai, she thinks. Children involved in the Lost Incident who’ve met up with the AI created from their suffering, so the pair can further evolve. Playmaker and Ai had a huge advantage over the others, she reflected, if that was the only case. But victory against Bohman had still cost so much, and the aftermath…

Her phone pings and she checks the message. Or messages, rather. Emma and her brother have texted her almost simultaneously, and almost the same thing.

And it’s so unbelievable at first that she just stares at the messages, then at her duel disk, then back at the messages.

It was supposed to be over. They’d already grieved and now they were struggling to move on. And now…

“What is it?” Kusanagi is staring at her. Takeru lifts his gaze from his duel disk as well.

Should she tell them? Should she not?

Well, she can’t help but tell them now, whether that was what Emma and her brother intended, or not. “The Ignis are reviving.”

Takeru drops his duel disk. It clatters noisily under the computers. Kusanagi had been holding nothing, but if he had, he might have dropped it as well. He certainly drops his jaw.

“Reviving?” Takeru croaked, finally. “Flame, too?”

“I guess so.” She flicks between one message and the next. They’re both fairly threadbare on the topic of other Ignis, except Akira’s mentions the possibility of Aqua reappearing in her duel disk.

Her heart warms a little at that. Goosebumps also rise in her skin at that.

And to answer Takeru’s question, she shrugs as casually as she dares. “I don’t know,” she says. “Emma and Akira just texted. They’d know more.”

“Emma?” Kusanagi mirrored, and Aoi silently curses her own slip of the tongue. How easy it is to forget guises and psuedonyms, especially now that they might wind up needing them again.

“Works for Akira,” she covers up as best she can. And it’s kind of the truth, because Akira usually commissions her, but it’s also kind of a lie.

She wonders when they can dispense with all the secrets, but given this secret isn’t hers to reveal, she shouldn’t mention it now.

“It seems someone was analysing the data Ai left behind in the Soltis and found it constantly changing,” she explains, as she asks for a bit more of an explanation and receives a lengthy list of dot points from Emma. Her phone rings in the middle – Akira trying to call – but she texts him back to say she’s in company.

After confirming with the other two, she explains which company as well.

“I’ll come over,” was the reply, and then minutes later Akira is driving up with Emma in the passenger seat.

And given how weird it is not to see Emma on a motorcycle, she can’t help but stifle a giggle. “No brother?” she asks Emma, though.

“He hates cars, remember,” she shrugs. “And is still getting used to company, but I’ll text him any updates we have.”

Then, as though to address the elephant in the room, she marches up to Kusanagi and extends a hand. “So you’re the shield defending Playmaker, huh. I’m Busshou Emma, or Ghost Girl if you prefer.”

“Ghost Girl,” he repeats, staring her up and down before accepting the hand. “You’ve dug us out of a few tight spots. And into them.”

“Hey.” She waves her free hand. “That one in the sewers wasn’t my fault. Honestly, I spared him the trouble of facing Revolver.” And got herself absorbed for her troubles, too, Blue Angel knew. Emma had never mentioned it, but Playmaker had.

Now that she thought about it, why had Playmaker thought the two had a connection back then? They hadn’t started formally working together until after the Tower of Hanoi incident.

There are a lot more things she wants to talk to Playmaker about. And now it looks like they may get an opportunity they didn’t really want.

“So you’re Ghost Girl,” Takeru says, looking over her as well. “Flame was grateful for your help with Aqua.”

“My pleasure,” she replied, “especially since Aoi got the spoils.”

Aoi shrugs. “You know your bounty hunter colleagues would wander at you for sharing your spoils.”

“But I’m sharing them with my partner, aren’t I?” She leans against Aoi’s chair, and it’s only then that she realises there isn’t enough seats inside the truck for all of them.

“I’ll fetch a few chairs from outside,” Kusanagi says, and leaves to do just that.

Akira leans against the wall, looking around. “Hard to believe all this was hidden away under the guise of a regular food truck.”

“Comes in handy in lots of ways,” Takeru says, draining his coffee. “It’s mobile, private but with a ready-made alibi, and there’s food and coffee waiting for us too. Though we still pay for the food, usually.”

“So he runs a business and fights in Link VRAINS.” Akira sounds impressed, and Aoi can appreciate the sentiment. Akira had done the same thing himself. “I guessed as much when we saw him with Fujiki-kun, but seeing the secret base itself is another story. And there’s the little brother Lightning mentioned as well.”

“Jin,” says Kusanagi, walking back in, a chair under each arm. He offers them to Akira and Emma, who take them gratefully. Emma remains half-slung over the back of Aoi’s chair though, but she won’t begrudge her that. That’s just Emma.

“Jin,” Kusanagi repeats when he’s seated. “Kusanagi Jin, that’s my little brother’s name. He was also one of the victims of the Lost Incident. The first, I think. He was catatonic when he came back to us. Was in a long term psychiatric ward until last week. He was meant to come home earlier, but…” He frowns. “Lightning stole his consciousness. It’s the reason Playmaker returned to Link VRAINS.”

“That was right before I showed up, right?” Takeru checks.

He nods.

“You…” Emma muses. “Soulburner, I guess?”

He nods. “Though I kind of used my Cyverse deck in the duel tournament and exposed myself anyway.”

She laughs at that. “You didn’t have a dummy deck?”

She shows off hers and Takeru grimaces. “Hey,” she mock-scolds, “I had Playmaker and Ai fall for this one, you know.”

“That you did.” Kusanagi laughs. “Though it’s probably the mildest trap he’s walked into, even though he walks into most of them knowingly and willingly.”

“Springing traps is the easiest way,” Emma shrugs. “All us hackers know that… Are you a hacker, Soulburner?”

“Homura Takeru,” Takeru corrects, “and no, I barely know one side of a computer from another.”

“Really.” Aoi is interested as well, and that might explain part of the trouble he has with their coursework. “Do you have the same trouble with the datapad?”

“Well, the datapad is a less complicated if you leave it on the textbooks, and Yuusaku usually fixed it up for me…”

“There had to be easier ways,” Aoi sighs, but it’s over and done know. Takeru’s going home, to a school and technology he’s far more familiar with.

“We’re getting off topic,” Akira says suddenly, and just like that they’re on topic again. Aoi straightens in her chair. “Blood Shephard and Revolver independently analysed the data and came to the same conclusion. Emma and I have looked over it and agree. The Ignis data is self-regenerating, despite our attempts to lock it down or reverse. Revolver’s backup plan is to lock the Ignis into six duel disks with a modified version of the programme Playmaker originally used to buy us more time. And the safest places for Ai, Flame and Aqua are Playmaker, Soulburner and Blue Maiden respectively.”

That went without saying, though Aoi wonders how keen Revolver was to return Ai, given how long they’d fought over the Ignis.

“Earth will go to Spectre. Revolver was quite insistent on that,” Akira continues. “He believes Spectre is the human corresponding to the Earth Ignis, and he is likely correct. We know Sugisaki-san corresponds to water, and Kusanagi Jin to ligh.” He glances at Kusanagi as he says this.

“That leaves the wind Ignis,” Kusanagi frowns. “And surely Revolver doesn’t think it’s a good idea to give Lightning to Jin. Especially after all the crap he pulled.”

“Of course not,” Emma reassures. “In fact, his idea is to give Lightning to you.”

“Me?” He blinks. “But Jin…” And then he frowns.

“It’ll be close to Jin,” Akira explains, “but not in a position to directly influence. However, this depends on trusting the programme. For safety’s sake, I’d suggest not keeping too many electronics around Jin: things the Ignis can manipulate.”

“That’s not a problem.” Kusanagi shakes his head. “My apartment’s pretty sparse and we can survive without the electronics in there, I guess. The problem is here. And if I take my duel disk with Lightning in it home, you really think they won’t run into each other?”

“That’s your decision,” Akira says quietly. “But you have a few days to think about it.”

He frowns, but agrees to consider the idea.

“And that leaves the wind Ignis,” Aoi points out. “Revolver defeated it twice, didn’t he?”

“He did,” Akira agrees, “and the wind Ignis was manipulated by Lightning, so who knows what it’s true personality is. Considering that, Revolver thinks it would be best to hang on to it. And that gives the Knights of Hanoi two Ignis, and us four, or three and one, depending on how you split it.”

Aoi offers her brother a soft smile. She may have battled on their side before, but her aim has always been to help her brother behind the scenes, even if she’s inadvertently caused trouble as Blue Angel.

And it looks like they’ve got a fight before them again, even if they have no idea what sort. Still, Aqua was on their side to begin with, and here’s another chance for them to duel together and grow, as well.

And a chance for Aqua to meet Miyu, as well.

She feels sorry for the Wind Ignis, at that thought. There’ll be no meeting his human, now, whether that was Windy’s choice or Lightning’s.


	27. Five Feet Apart

Jin looks at him curiously when he gets home, but how can Shoichi speak his mind? It’s stuffed full with thoughts regarding the Ignis, and about one Ignis in particular.

He hasn’t even mentioned duelling in front of Jin. How can he possibly bring an Ignis into their safe haven?

“Brother?” Jin asks. “Is something bothering you?”

He looks so young, so earnest – a flashback to the old Jin who used to brighten him whenever he was down in the dumps. Whether it was his parents scolding him for wanting to be a sports professional instead of something academic (and weren’t they thrilled when he eventually wound up running his self-employed hot dog truck?) or something that happened in school, Jin was always the bright spot he’d taken for granted.

He forces a smile on his face. Of course, Jin isn’t fooled. “Something was,” he admits, “but I’ve decided. It won’t bother us again.”

He frowns. He can’t possibly know, with that scrap of information, but still he volunteers: “Aren’t you being too hasty?”

And Shoichi blinks, because yes he may be, but Jin of all people can’t be saying that.

But Jin is in one of his moods, it seems – one of those pre-Lost Incident ones where he’d dig out whatever was bothering Shoichi and brainstorm how to fix it – and wasn’t about to let things go.

And Shoichi decides they do need to talk about this sometimes, so let’s just see how far they’ll make it.

“In a bit,” he says. “But first, have you eaten?” He always cooks to order, but running a hot dog truck means he wants to be eating hot dogs all the time… or drinking coffee. Yuusaku probably ate more hot dogs than he did, all in all. Shoichi wasn’t sure Yuusaku even knew how to cook, and Takeru had admitted he didn’t.

So had Aoi, but at least she had her robot maid. And so had Yuusaku, before the mess with Ai.

Jin shakes his head, which Shoichi should be unhappy about given the time, but it gives him the excuse to cook something a bit more fulfilling than instant meals. “How about some roast?” he offers, opening the fridge.

And wonders if electronics includes things like said fridge and microwaves and the electric stoves and lights… and, given that this was Lightning, it probably did.

It’s not a foolproof plan at all, and how did Revolver even come up with the idea? Or was it Zaizen? Either way…

“Brother?”

Right, he’s standing with the fridge door still open. “Cut the vegetables?” he offers.

Jin gives him a searching look, before moving past him to fish carrots, broccoli and bean out of the fridge, and a vegetable knife out of the knife block.

Shoichi moves to speed-defrost and prepare the meat, and until everything’s in the oven, they work in silence.

And then they nurse two mismatched cups of tea over the little crickety table and there’s no avoiding it any longer. Not unless he wants to wrap Jin in cotton wool and isn’t that the whole reason he brought him here, because wasn’t that long stay place comfortable and caring but ultimately padded with fairy floss and hospital gauze?

One cup has soccer balls on the handle. The other has a mix of different coloured kuribohs. Jin, to his surprise, has taken a hold of the kuriboh cup… but then again, duelling was something familiar, if still riddled with scars.

As though responding to his thoughts, Jin gently caresses the kuribohs on the cup. “They still have these.”

They’d had one for Jin way back when, as well. Out of a habit Shoichi hadn’t even realised he’d embraced, he’d brought similarly patterned mugs when he’d moved out of his parents’ place.

“Some things don’t grow old,” he reflected.

“That’s nice.” And Jin smiles softly. “Too many things change too quickly.”

Like how the Lost Incident had caused so many irreversible changes. Killed one child. Killed another’s parents. Damaged the relationship between child and family, and between child and self and world.

“Jin…” he begins, and then he doesn’t know what to say.

No, that’s not right. Hasn’t he been keeping Jin up to date, for all these years? Isn’t there a gaping hole in the middle?

“Remember when Playmaker defeated the Knights of Hanoi?”

Jin nods. “That’s when…” He bites his lip. His fingers wrap tightly around the mug. “That’s when you first offered to live with me, but then that yellow… thing –“ The tea isn’t warm and comforting enough anymore.

“That was another Ignis,” Shoichi explains, and really, it’s as good a starting point as he’s going to get. “An Ignis like Ai. And we learnt a lot more about the Ignis through the battles that ensured. Met a lot more allies – friends – as well.”

“Friends?” Jin repeats. His eyes are still wide, but he wraps his fingers around the cup again.

“Friends,” Shoichi agrees. “We got to know Blue Angel and her brother. And met another boy: Homura Takeru, who’d been inspired by the heroes of Link VRAINS to become Soulburner. He’s…” Somewhere in between Yuusaku and Jin, he thinks. It took someone else fighting to for him to be able to fight himself. But one day, even Jin…

Though he’d hoped there’d be no more enemies long before that occurred.

“Soulburner… fought.”

And like that, with stuttering interruptions, they made it through the tale.

“Soulburner… fought,” Jin repeats. “Windy’s human… died. And Playmaker… saved us all.” He let’s go of the cup again: makes his hands into fists. “I… was just a puppet.” Tears fell. “I don’t want to be a puppet anymore, but I can’t – “

Shoichi doesn’t interrupt. Can’t interrupt.

“I haven’t left,” Jin admits. “I draw. I sit and stare. Sometimes… I’m back there.”

And that breaks Shoichi’s heart more than anything else. He’s abandoned his chare before his mind catches up and has swept his brother into a hug.

Jin lets him. Into his chest, he keeps talking. Shoichi can almost feel his lips vibrating… or perhaps that’s the tremor of their hearts, beating in an unsteady tandem.

And he makes sure to listen hard, to not miss a single word, because despite the stuttering and the short sentences, this is the most Jin has talked in a long while.

“I tried. At first, I tried. I ate. I slept. I duelled. I won. I lost. Then, when I won…” He shakes more. Shoichi tightens his arms around him. “I thought I was saved. I wasn’t. Monsters wore rescuer masks. Then I kept losing. Finally, I stopped.”

He’d been catatonic when they’d found him: catatonic, emaciated, almost starved to death. He must have still been drinking, though. Somehow, he’d kept on drinking.

Hadn’t Yuusaku said that, even on days he lost every duel, a little juice-box appeared?

“I’m stopped. I stopped. But I moved again. Little bits.” The small milestones they’d celebrated, they’d waited for, until there were enough of them that the doctors whispered he may have a normal life ahead of him after all.

But then Lightning had swooped in and Shoichi wondered if all of that hard work, all of that time healing, was down the drain.

Except it wasn’t, thankfully. Yuusaku said he’d seemed terrified when he’d appeared in that battle against Revolver, thrown carelessly as a hostage and then pulled away just as quick –

But instead it has spurred something in him. Perhaps it was that feeling of lacking control, lacking power, being the only one who couldn’t influence things at all and not just because he’d frozen up.

And here he is, babbling about the same.

“Scared. No power. Didn’t know. Couldn’t duel. Forgot. And then… safe again. Not trick this time.”

“Safe,” Shoichi repeats. “Yes, Yuusaku defeated Bohman. He saved us both.”

“Us?” Jin lifts his head. “You too?”

“Yeah.” And Shoichi needs to admit his own shortcomings here. “Lightning got me good, and we guessed he would. He had you as a hostage, after all. Wasn’t afraid of using you. So I knew he’d try to take away Playmaker’s supports, try to take away _me_ – and to keep you safe, I had to let him. I drove Playmaker to fight me and it broke his heart.”

“Broke… heart?” Jin repeats, and he repeats it another time, as though searching for something else in it. “Yuusaku… fought. Always fought.”

“Even he had years he didn’t fight,” Shoichi reminds.

“Where is… he now?”

“Visiting family,” Shoichi replies. He’s not entirely sure, but that’s what Takeru suggested was the case. He was still walking that fine balance of looking too hard and not looking at all. Yuusaku hadn’t reappeared in Den City, anyway.

But now he has to update Yuusaku too, about the Ignis reviving, about Revolver’s plan, or else he’s going to get a nasty shock when Ai shows up in his duel disk again.

And the timing’s all wrong, he thinks. No way Yuusaku’s moved on, but hopefully he’s moved past that numbing shock, at least.

Yuusaku who’s lost the most… isn’t he even allowed to grieve?

“They’re coming… back?” Jin’s voice shakes. He sounds horrified… and also hopeful?

Shoichi pulls back a little and looks at his brother’s face. Yes, there is a spark of something in there.

“Where?” he asks.

“Not here,” Shoichi says.

Jin’s brow furrows. “You thought, earlier. Too quickly.”

“Yeah,” he admits, “but it’s too much, too fast, isn’t it?”

“You?” Jin asks.

That’s what Revolver asked, as well.

“Of course. No-one dreamed of slamming you with that nutcase straight away.” Or hopefully ever, but that’s not really his place to deny, either. Then, just to hammer the nail into the coffin of his decision, he says: “Revolver and Zaizen asked me to take Lightning. So it’ll be close to you but not with you, and you can have as much contact with it as you want. But I don’t think it’s that neat: I mean, I live with you, we have electronics, and most things we can’t compromise on. Not to mention the hot dog cart won’t survive a malicious Ignis.”

And, to be honest, he’s not even sure he can keep Lightning under control. Playmaker and Ai were the best team by far but Ai still did a bunch of stuff without Playmaker’s knowledge.

Then again, did Flame or Aqua do anything without their humans’ knowledge? Even if Aqua was a bit of a special case, given that Sugisaki was comatose at the time.

“Lightning… came from me.”

“…yeah.” And that’s one of the things he’s had the hardest time coming to grips with. He can only guess Lightning’s flaws – because hadn’t Revolver said something about the programme being damaged, or incomplete – that led to that drastic difference.

“Broken… like me.”

“You’re not broken.” But maybe that’s minimising the suffering. “You’re strong. Look at how far you’ve come from that time.”

“Maybe… he’s better too.”

And why? Shoichi thinks. Jin is almost defending Lightning.

“Need to fight.” But Jin is white and shaking and his pupils are too large. “Need to face him.”

“Not today you don’t!” Because they still have a bit of time before that decision needs to be made, and hurdles they need to clear in the interim if they do wind up taking custody of Lightning –

And even though he’s terrified himself, he can’t help but be proud of that gigantic step Jin is taking.

He can only hope it’s not off the edge of a cliff.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Five Feet Apart is the name of one of my favourite movies. It’s about kids with Cystic Fibrosis who keep six feet apart to prevent a mixing of colonised bacteria, because most kids are colonised with nasty bugs which can be lethal to them or others. Some decide to fight their condition/fate and shorten the distance to five, hence the title. And this is Jin’s very shaky attempt to try and shorten it.
> 
> Speaking of Jin, I don’t recall him actually saying anything, but this isn’t the fic I want to play selective mutism in for him so we’ll leave that out. And the kidnap by Lightning could have worked out two ways – back peddle or the trigger to fast-forward and, again, I’m going for the latter. Admittedly it’s largely because I want to use him in the story in a more active role, and Lightning needs a chance of redemption as well and he’s not going to get that with a comatose partner. It’s bad enough trying to figure out what to do about the Windy situation this arc. That being said, I don’t intend to minimise his suffering, but Shoichi is also a safe environment for him (which can also be screwed up due to Shoichi having been there when Jin got kidnapped, but again, not the fic I’m going to play that up in).


	28. Long-Distance Mail (Yuusaku)

There was a brief reprieve, but the messages have started up again. He ignores them until his father mentions they can hear the beeps through the wall, and then he quickly scrolls through them.

If it was a simple phone he would have muted it, but he doesn’t think he’s ever programmed a mute function into his duel disk, as much as he’d threatened Ai with it, and he’s not about to start now. Not anytime soon, anyway. He’s on regular holidays now even though he’ll need to make up his exams when (if) he returns, he’s only been studying enough to keep himself occupied when his parents aren’t home.

Studying… and looking at all the different board games they had lying around the house. Gaming must be in his bloods and his genes, he laments. He just can’t let it go. In some form or another…

He freezes. He’s finally made it past the cursory “how are you doing?”s and now there’s a lengthy message from Zaizen Akira.

He skims it, then reads it more closely, word for word.

His heart is thudding and his hands are shaking by the end of it.

“Did you know, Ai?” he whispers, too loud in the empty room.

There’s no answer – not yet. But in a matter of days, there could be.

And he isn’t sure if he’s shaking because the rollercoaster of emotions had only just started settling down before picking up again, or if he’s that overjoyed, or anticipatory, or scared –

Or maybe even furious, because if this was a possibility then why had Ai made it sound so final? And what even was the point of suicide by proxy (and especially him of all people!) if there was a guarantee of returning.

But then again, Ai had done that before. That stunt he’d pulled with Bohman. Putting a backup copy into Roboppi – and look what had happened to Roboppi as a result.

But this sounded like something different. Zaizen had included parts of the code, illustrating how it morphed and changed and grew to reflect the Ai of old. He’s seen enough of Ai’s code to pick it out straight away. In a matter of a few more days…

But then, why? Ai must have known; surely he couldn’t have been this blind. Unless Ai had known, and had tried to counter it and failed. Ai was thorough; he’d seen that much. Ai left contingency plans everywhere, even when it meant not admitting he didn’t quite trust Yuusaku.

He didn’t. He’d been manipulating things for five years, after all. And even after Yuusaku had finally clued in to that fact, he couldn’t bring himself to be angry at the time. Because where would he have been without the Cyverse deck attracting the Knights of Hanoi? Where would he have been without Ai attracting their attention? Where would he have been without Storm Access constantly upgrading his deck… and it hadn’t taken him long at all to throw all caution to the winds even when he didn’t necessarily need to. It worked out, of course; cards he didn’t use at the time were useful in the future. And the more cards he had, the more possibilities, the more power…

And hadn’t that been what he’d wanted, all in all: power over his own destiny?

And at the end, there’s a little note saying Revolver plans to lock Ai into his duel disk again, and he’s in two minds about that as well. Because he’d wanted Ai to be free, in the end, but Ai had squandered his freedom. And was Ai ever locked? He’d slipped the lock at some point, but who’s to say it had ever worked at all? And Revolver was working under the assumption that it had worked, for a time. Or else Revolver knew something he didn’t.

He probably did. Revolver knew more about the Ignis coding than the rest of them put together, and Yuusaku was a self-taught, self-proclaimed hacker and nothing more.

He’s still staring at the codes when his parents come home. He’s still staring at the codes when his father comes upstairs to find him.

“That’s a fancy bit of coding there,” his father comments, looking over his shoulder. “Machine learning, huh.”

“It’s Ai,” Yuusaku corrects.

“Ai,” his father repeats. “The Ignis?”

Yuusaku doesn’t confirm it. He doesn’t need to. He just offers the duel disk and, after another pause, his father takes it and reads the long message from Zaizen Akira.

“Zaizen Akira,” he says finally, “the current head of SOL Technologies.”

Not what Yuusaku expects him to pick out of all of that, but he shrugs. “He’s decent. He cares more for his sister than his career. And he helped us out.”

“Even with SOL Technology as a whole braying for your blood.” He hums. “You don’t see many people like that nowadays. Except… I suppose when it’s a few of you against the world, you find more like-minded souls.”

And Yuusaku supposes his father is right about that. Him and Kusanagi. Zaizen and the bounty hunter siblings. Blue Angel and Go Onizuka. Soulburner and Flame. Revolver and the Knights of Hanoi. Allies who’d worked against him at some point or other, but who’d united at the end of the day, to save the network.

“I like that in a prospective business partner.”

And now Yuusaku is openly staring because his father’s gone completely off topic now.

“Well…” He grins bashfully. “Worth a thought, anyway.”

And tentatively, automatically, Yuusaku finds himself returning the grin.

“And there we go.” His father pokes his cheek. “You don’t smile often enough, still.”

The smile disappears. “I guess I don’t.” Though he’d started smiling more with Ai, he thought. And now… “I just don’t know what to make of this all. Did Ai know this was a possibility? Or did he fully intend for that to be the end? And either way, I’ve destroyed him, I’m grieving for him and now…”

“And now he’s returning and while that makes you happy, the fact that it undermines the finality of death and the means thereof upsets you.” He pauses, looks at Yuusaku’s face and sees something Yuusaku can’t see himself, and adds: “And angers you.”

“Yeah.” And, because that’s summed it up so perfectly, he has nothing else left to say. “Yeah.”

His father sets the duel disk down again. “It’s not a forgone conclusion. Zaizen-san is asking for your opinion.”

“So he is.” It had seemed like the least important part of the email, at first. But as he considers that line, alone, he realises it’s more important than that. It’s like his father said: it undermines what they endured before. It’s like he told Zaizen Akira once, when they were still enemies and not tentative allies. It’s like he told Zaizen Aoi not so long ago, and Revolver not long after that. It’s his decision to make. It needs to be his decision.

Then, before he can second-guess himself (because why go in circles when he’s going to come to the same conclusion again anyway?) he sends off a quick reply.

His father reads it over his shoulder. “You haven’t earned the right to decide my future, huh.”

That last bit is, of course, his father’s addition.

“Once, he offered me a normal life,” Yuusaku explained. “I only wanted one thing at the time… but I still don’t think he could have made good on it.”

“We tried.” And his father’s voice breaks and Yuusaku finds himself turning around to look at him fully: at those deep eyes wearing ten year long scars.

“I know,” he says, and he doesn’t mean for it to sound as ungrateful as it does to his ears, but he doesn’t know how to make it better. “I had to find the answers and face them myself.” And when it was over, he hadn’t known what to do anymore because that was ten years lost: five years trying to move on, and another five trying to uncover the past so that he could.

“And now?” his father asked. “Are you going to face them some more, or close the door?”

His parents probably want him to close the door, no matter how they’ve supported him otherwise, but he knows he can’t. And they probably know it too, the way his father is watching him.

“I’m going back to Den City.”

His father nods without surprise. “The weekend?” he offers. “And we’ll talk to the school.”

The Monday after the weekend would be the first day of the new term, and the earliest Revolver expected the Ignis to return.

“Sunday’s fine,” he agrees. That gives him a few more days with his family, especially since the prospect of Ai’s returned has ripped all the fog in his mind away – or burned it.

“Sunday’s fine,” he repeats, after some more thought – though it’s not, because it’s either too much time, or not enough.


	29. Business Deal (Akira)

Akira stares at Fujiki Yuusaku’s reply for a full minute before he laughs. He remembers their conversation well. Remembers thinking that he was a remarkable child but was heading down a path of self-destruction. And in the end, that had turned out to be a prophecy in a way none of them had predicted. Not even Revolver who’d always been against the Ignis, against the thoughts of coexistence.

“What do you think?” he asks Aoi, who of course will also understand, as she’d been there as well for the duel and the discussion they’d had in the middle of it.

She reads it, and frowns. “I guess Fujiki-kun will be coming back.” She looks back at her brother. “Didn’t you want him to?”

“I might have had the hair-brained idea that he’d find happiness far away from all this, given that looking for happiness within the situation backfired.”

“I guess,” Aoi muses, “or maybe he’s thinking of it as an incomplete story, and maybe we shouldn’t assume the end? But Playmaker is going to do his own thing, regardless of what others do or say. We know he respects us, but whether he chooses to return or not, take Ai back or not… they’re all his choices in the end.”

“They are,” he agrees, “just as your choices are your own as well. Though I hear Emma taught you how to hack the SOL Technology locks.”

Aoi laughs a little awkwardly. “I’m not sure if she did that just to spite her brother or not, to be honest. Or whether I’m going to use that much in future endeavours.”

He’d rather she doesn’t, but at least she knows a bit should the need ever arise again. “I still have my old notes,” he muses. “It’s not a bad skill to have in your pocket, even though I’d prefer you aim for a more reliable and legal job.”

“I have time,” Aoi smiles, and even though she is sixteen – like him when his life was uprooted – she has time. She has two more years of school, several more hopefully at university. “And I have ideas.”

“Anything you feel like sharing at the moment?” he asks. He doesn’t push, but he is curious.

“Well, the obvious things,” she laughs. “Idol, something programming related… but honestly, I don’t think I want to spend the rest of my life doing those things. That’s the teenage me who was looking for a way to matter, a way to be useful… and got a lot more than she bargained for. But some of the things I experienced during that time gave me other ides. Like going into healthcare… a nurse, or a social worker.”

“Oh?” And, notably, doctor is absent there.

“Yeah, something Baira said…” And Baira had turned out to be a doctor, hadn’t she.

“More intimate,” she explains. “With Miyu-chan as well… A doctor looks after lots of patients at a time, and may spend as little as a couple of minutes a day with the stable ones. And comatose patients can be stable as well. But the nurses are always there, checking blood pressures and heart rates and turning them in bed so they don’t break out in sores and given them baths in bed and if I do go down that path, I want that close relationship with my patients. Baira was pretty disillusioned with her role. It almost sounded like patients became names and numbers.”

“There are other doctors who think differently,” Akira points out, though Baira, when he’d met her, hadn’t struck him as someone so disillusioned either.

She shrugs. “I only know who I’ve met,” she says, “and what I’ve seen. But I can ask the nurses when I visit Miyu-chan next.”

And she certainly can. “And why a social worker?” he asks.

“I don’t think I’d make a good counsellor,” she admits, “but they focus on the emotional side of things: people who break apart from hospitalisations, or who don’t have a home to go back to, and families who grow thinner going back and forth between hospital and home. They find practical ways to make things easier, and they know the ins and outs of the social system to make it possible.”

“That almost sounds like hacking the social system.” And perhaps it shouldn’t be so amusing, but given he is a hacker himself, he can’t fault the thought. And a social worker on their side might have been able to secure their assets, should have been able to secure their assets given they were minors and in the right. But it had taken years of hacking before he could get back what had been stolen from them. Illegalities piling on top of illegalities.

“You’ll see people sick or injured or dying regardless,” he says, instead.

“There’s no avoiding that,” she replies. “Even in a virtual world, we saw that. And maybe… I can secure futures for children like us, so they don’t have to do what you did. Maybe, I can make the place kids like Playmaker and Soulburner and Miyu-chan come out to a little more stable, so they don’t scramble for scraps that don’t stick together. Maybe I can make orphanages a little more palatable so Spectre doesn’t see something horrific like the Lost Incident like a saving grace. Maybe I can live up to the title of Blue Angel after all.”

And the way she says it all, the way she looks earnestly into his eyes, makes him think the idea is more than a passing possibility.

“You’ll need to talk to a lot more people,” he cautions.

She grins. Ten years ago, she’d have hidden her face in his school uniform. Even a year ago, she’d have worn a proverbial mask and said as little as she could get away with. But now… “I’m an idol,” she points out. “That’s good enough practice. And now I have lots of friends as well, and I can talk to you about a lot more things.”

And there is another reminder as to how much they’ve grown due to Playmaker and the Ignis.

“I’ll visit Miyu-chan as well,” she says. “I don’t know what her mother will say when she sees me there, but I can’t worry about that. I don’t regret my decision.” And she looks bashful, suddenly. “And you didn’t even scold me.”

“I don’t think you were wrong,” he replies, “not then, and certainly not now.”

And it was foolish of Miyu-chan to have taken something so valuable as well, but he has his suspicions back then and now as well. Things he won’t voice to Aoi yet. Things he might never need to voice. But Aoi had had her own suspicions. Why Miyu, who was so bright and outgoing and the one who’d reached out to Aoi, hadn’t had any other friends. Miyu with a single mother, with a mother who was always at work and alternated between supervising too strictly and not enough for a child her age.

Six vulnerable children, whether they’d been too far from home or their homes weren’t safe environments to begin with, plucked from the streets and kept captive for months.

Playmaker’s and Kusanagi Jin’s lives had been fairly mundane. He wasn’t sure about Kusanagi Jin but Fujiki Yuusaku’s only crime had been finding a potential friend and following him home. Soulburner’s attempt to run away from home had gone catastrophically wrong. Spectre had felt he hadn’t had a home to begin with. Miyu, too, had been arriving home late as a routine, and it wasn’t until she’d missed two days of school that people realised she’d been missing at all. And Windy’s humans, trying to escape bullies and winding up in a greater hell, and then dying when attempting to climb back out and into some semblance of normalcy afterwards.

Akira felt guilty looking up the victims, the families. But he needed to know: to fight, to protect, even if it was presumptuous of him.

And here is Playmaker calling him out on it again, and Akira is still not going to walk away. And, sometimes, the simple things go a long way.

“You’ve missed your exams,” he types, as Aoi wanders into the kitchen to help set up dinner, and maybe he sounds like the scolding big brother or someone poking his nose where it doesn’t belong, but he’ll do it anyway. “I can help excuse you and get them rescheduled.”

The reply comes after they’ve enjoyed dinner and Aoi is curled up on the couch with a paperback. “My mother’s a school teacher.”

He doesn’t expect that personal tidbit, and he can’t help but let out a soft laugh.

“What is it?” Aoi asks curiously.

“Fujiki-kun,” he replies. “He says his mother is a teacher.”

“Oh.” She sounds surprised as well. “How did that come up in conversation?”

“I was asking about exams,” Akira replies, then looks back at his data pad at Aoi’s exasperated stare in response. He finds his fingers typing out the innocent question, then shrugs and sends it. Playmaker simply won’t reply if it bothers him.

He does, though. And more quickly this time. “His father works with a company that produces and sells games,” he says. “Largely focused on non-digital games but that includes things like Duel Monsters who originated on cards and mats and have since become digitalised.”

So he’s had more resources for duelling at his disposal since even before the Lost Incident, or perhaps it is a new line of work. But it seems duelling won’t leave Playmaker alone even if he tries.

And, given their earlier conversation topic, he has to ask Playmaker as well: “what do you plan, for the future?”

That answer comes quickly too, if fragmented. “I don’t know.” And then, another, longer, answer finally comes. “I still want a world where we can live together peacefully. Humans won’t stop overreaching and then fighting back. And development of AIs aren’t going to stop because of the Ignis. And maybe the Ignis won’t stop either. But I need to understand humanity a lot better than I do now.”

So he’s been thinking along similar lines to Aoi, even with a slightly different goal in sight.

And Playmaker is going to wind up more likely to work with him in future endeavours than Aoi is.

“Are you trying to adopt Playmaker again?” Aoi asks, amused. She’s finished her book at some point and has moved over to peek at their messages.

“Probably,” he admits. “But I’m getting more than I expected from him, honestly.”

“Oh, I don’t think he’s so adverse to talking about himself,” Aoi replies. “Remember? He told us what happened as a child easily enough, and he doesn’t need to hide his identity as Playmaker anymore. I think it’s a good thing, anyway. Whether he’s extending an olive branch or this is him trusting us a little bit… You’re going to take hold either way, right?”

“Right,” he smiles, then frowns. “Though he’s finally reconnecting with his family, and the Ignis are pulling him away from that again.”

“Invite them,” she suggests. “His father works with games, too. And you need new projects once the Soltis are sorted out, and it could be a while before Link VRAINS is to the level it was at before. Street duels are one thing, but there’s no reason you can’t promote other games as well. And there’s dungeon dice monsters, for example, that incorporates duelling cards and board games.”

“There is.” And it’s a nice suggestion as well. More work in the short term, but it will allow Link VRAINS to expand beyond duels. Give avenues to those who don’t want to be dedicated entirely to duelling. And to play with multiple people as well, instead of the one-on-one restrictions that duels afforded. “That’ll be a change, though. Link VRAINS has primarily focused on duels… Though there have been ordinary puzzles, as well, for certain quest events.”

“Was Link VRAINS intended to be exclusive for duellists?” she asks curiously.

He’s not sure, actually. “I’ll need to look into that, but I don’t think so. It certainly has been for at least the last ten years…” And then he freezes, because maybe that’s the answer right there. “I need to look into that.”

Aoi catches his hand when he starts to stand. “Tomorrow,” she reminds.

“Tomorrow,” he agrees.

Though he’ll respond to Playmaker now, of course, because Aoi’s idea is sensible regardless of what answer he finds.


	30. Entertainment (Emma)

Emma finds herself knocking on the front door of a rather spiffy looking orphanage early the next morning. Akira’s given her the address and Aoi’s the one who’s setting the plan into motion. She’ll handle Soulburner too, presumably, which leaves her to convince her brother. And Kusanagi is more than happy to volunteer his café.

How Akira convinced Playmaker, she doesn’t know. But that leaves the Knights of Hanoi and Go Onizuka.

And apparently that means showing up to an orphanage with gifts. Though SOL Technologies has plenty of duel cards they can no longer sell because of previous experimentation and the AI. Booster packs opened for no reason other than to create temporary decks, which were themselves created for no reason except to add to the database of cards. If SOL Technologies owned a company like Industrial Illusions who created said cards, the process would be far cheaper, but they don’t.

Akira was more than happy for her to take a generous pile of already registered cards from the archive room as a peace offering.

And she puts on her best smile as a young woman opens the door. “Hello,” she says cheerfully. “I work for Zaizen Akira. Was hoping I could speak to Go-san for a bit?”

She stares at him. Another man stands behind her, and he frowns. “Zaizen Akira,” he repeats. “We’ve had a bit of trouble with SOL Technologies, you know.”

“More than a bit,” she says. “Yeah, I know all about it. But they both fought on Playmaker’s side in the end, and that’s what this is about. And Akira never approved of those… experiments.”

She didn’t either, but her identity means nothing to these two after all.

But the disapproval means something. The man steps back, and the woman holds the door open. “Come in,” she says, though she sounds reluctant. “We hoped things were over, though. Unless this is about the re-opening of Link VRAINS.”

“Not yet,” she admits. “This is about a problem which isn’t as resolved as we thought.”

She isn’t sure how much these two know, of course, or much about their roles. She knows what Akira knows: that Go Onizuka grew up in an orphanage, and when he started making his revenue as a Charisma duellist, began wiring his finds to that orphanage so the children could have better lives. She knows the matron looks after these children well with their limited funds. She knows that Go Onizuka’s manager – that broad-shouldered man – funds the orphanage out of his own pocket as well.

And he’s always supported Go’s duelling, old-fashioned or not.

Emma is honestly amazed he let Go become a puppet of SOL Technologies, from what she heard from Akira. But perhaps Go didn’t leave his manager much choice.

But she’s not an enemy and she comes bearing a peace offering, not gifts. She offers it to the woman. Explains they were collecting dust when she swoons over the potential cost. Grins when a flock of children come in and begin sorting out the cards and splitting them evenly between. Perhaps they should hire the kids to sort out the stores, she ponders. But SOL Technologies, as it is, is no place for children.

And Go Onizuka is sitting comfortably at the dining table.

“Bessho Emma,” she says. “I’m a freelancer, currently employed by Zaizen Akira.” She glances around: the matron is with the children, and Go’s manager is standing beside him. Fair enough, he supposes. But she doesn’t know how much you knows. “How much do you know about the Ignis?”

“You should know,” Go replies, but Emma is looking at his manager instead. A grimace forms on the other’s face. So he knows enough.

“I also go by Ghost Girl,” is what she says instead.

“The bounty hunter?” They’re both surprised, and isn’t that a pleasant reaction?

She smiles. “Yes, and as such I’ve had my fair share of run ins with the Ignis, and with Playmaker.”

“And so?” Go asks. “That’s all over and done with now. The chances of Playmaker even appearing in Link VRAINS again is pretty low… at least without an alternate avatar. Without an enemy to face, the media or SOL Technologies will rip him apart.”

“Now, now.” Though he has a point. “I can’t speak for the media but Akira won’t let SOL Technologies do such a thing now that he’s in sole charge.”

“There’s still the bounty hunters.”

“And between myself and Blood Shephard, I think we can manage.” Her grin becomes a little tighter now. “Unless you’re planning on returning as such?”

“No.” And he is frank, unashamed, as he answers her. “I plan to be a shining star of hope for these children, and pay back the time I lost myself to revenge.”

“Well, Playmaker’s undefeated record is still pretty tough to swallow.” Though she thinks the world might have seemed a little kinder if he could have lost and not suffered for it. But there haven’t been many duels that she knows of that he could have afforded to lose. None, she reconsiders, because even the seemingly innocuous ones like against herself had Ai on the line. And he hadn’t duelled Blue Angel until she’d had a Hanoi card in her deck.

“I wonder what a Playmaker who could duel for fun would look like,” she muses aloud.

Something in Go’s face softens, as well. And his manager has a look of pity on his own face.

“Actually,” she says. “How much do you know about Playmaker’s past?”

“The Lost Incident,” Go says. “I’ve heard that word thrown around a few times, but I don’t have many details.”

She tells them, because she has quite a bit more, and she got a good deal of it straight from Playmaker’s mouth. Go is frowning when she’s finished. Pity is dripping off the Manager’s face… and they’re in an orphanage. There are surely some bad stories amongst the children here.

Then again, being kidnapped and tortured for six months with a game most people here love is unfathomable.

“So that’s what drives him,” Go sighs. “I wondered… what will happen with Playmaker loses. Perhaps it’s less to do with the situations Link VRAINS finds itself in and more to do with his own inability to accept defeat.”

“Well, considering the consequences, we should be glad it’s equated to odds-defying possibilities, even if Playmaker himself on the whole is quite rational.” She shrugs. “Though yes, Playmaker should lose at some point. A loss that will teach him not all losses are like what he suffered as a child. And it’s not like his ultimate victory is bringing him much joy at the moment.”

“Against his partner Ignis. Of course not.” And why does Go sound melancholic when he says that? Did he and Earth share a deeper relationship than they all saw?

But that’s not the reason she’s come here, and the kids sound like they’re about done sorting cards.

“We’ve confirmed the Ignis are regenerating,” she says finally. She ignores the shock that appears on the manager’s expression, and the hardened look on Go’s, and presses on. “I’ve seen the data myself. So has Akira. And Blood Shephard and Revolver have independently verified this.”

“Regenerating,” Go repeats. “Then what was the point of defeating them?”

“Who knows what their memories and intentions will be,” she shrugs. “Revolver is working to lock the Ignis into pre-designated duel disks, so at least we’ll have some control over the situation. He’s also tried to delete them permanently, of course. So has Blood Shephard.”

“Unsuccessfully, since we’re having this discussion,” the manager says. “And will Playmaker’s Ignis return to him?”

Emma nods. “Playmaker, of course, is aware as well. And Aqua will return to Blue Maiden.”

Go chuckles at that. “Blue Maiden gave me a thrashing in disguise. Shame the rest of the world think I Iost to an anonymous high-schooler.”

“If that’s all it is, then you have grown,” says Emma cheekily. “Better than I can say for Soulburner who outs himself, defeats Blue Maiden Marincess deck, and then loses to the Trickstars he’s faced before – but good for Aoi of course.”

“You sound like you know her well,” the manager says. “I suppose you would, given she’s your protégé.”

“That she is,” Emma says proudly. “But we’re getting off topic. Soulburner, naturally, will take Flame back. Spectre, who’s the origin, will take Earth.”

“Earth’s origin,” Go repeats. His expression is closed. “Spectre is one of the knights of Hanoi, isn’t he?”

“Yep.” And she hasn’t had much to do with him so she can’t add much more. “Revolver himself will take Windy, given his partner’s dead. As for Lightning… that’s a work in progress.” She doesn’t explain more because she doesn’t think Go has had the opportunity to meet Kusanagi Shoichi yet. “But we’re having a strategy meeting at the end of the week. Casting off disguises. Working out what we’ll do with the Ignis, when they come back. Getting all the facts on the table. Secrecy hurt a lot of people last time, so we want to work together.”

“And you’re including me?” Go asks.

“Akira is including you,” she corrects. “Though I doubt anyone is averse at the moment. If Earth or Aqua decide otherwise, it’ll be their prerogative of course, but we think they won’t be able to communicate with us until next week at the earliest.”

“Next week,” Go repeats. “That’s not a lot of time.”

“Time is relative,” she replies, because she’s an impatient woman and a week seems like a lot when she’s not doing much in the interim. Maybe she should meet up with Kusanagi. See if he’s trying to crack the Ignis code as well. Between the two of them they can manage something she can’t quite do on her own when it comes to the Ignis, and Kengo is head-first into his own programmes.

And if not, she’ll just drive over there and insert herself into the process. The Ignis may have out-programmed and out-duelled her on multiple occasions, but she doesn’t intend to allow that forever.

“You look like you have a few scores to settle with the Ignis,” Go comments.

“A healthy amount,” she agrees. “They’re good professional rivals when they’re not trying to destroy the world.”

The manager laughs. “You’ve got a young heart.”

“Why thank you,” she replies, though she knows it’s not entirely a compliment. It’s the same thing Kengo’s told her: she’s too free… but she’s gotten into trouble before, and now’s not the time to be backing out of the fight.

The kids fall quiet. Her phone rings. The chair scrapes as she stands. “I’ll see you at Café Nagi Friday evening,” she says. “It’ll be parked at the top of the hill overlooking the ocean. Good place to see the Stardust Road, I’ve heard. You can bring your manager too.” She grins. “But I’d leave the kids at home.”

“We’ll be there,” Go says. “I can’t dismiss the return of the Ignis, either.”


	31. Strategy Meeting (Hayami)

It’s the first time she’s been to Café Nagi, but it’s a private seating: chairs and tables set out in front of the truck, in front of one of Den City’s famous but isolated lookouts. In the cool evening, there is no-one around. And the mansion that stands on top of the hill has been empty for at least half a year.

She’s not sure why they’ve chosen this spot. Perhaps it’s the seclusion. Perhaps it means something special to somebody. But she drives the Zaizen siblings and one of their classmates here and parks the car, and there’s nobody except the owner of the café, Kusanagi Shoichi, setting out the spread.

“Would you like a hand?” Akira asks.

She hurries to help as well, and by the time the five of them have finished, Bessho Ema has arrived on her motorcycle as well.

Dogun Kengo arrives soon after, and Go Onizuka with his manager, and then a pale man in an even paler suit on foot that bears a striking resemblance to Spectre from the Knights of Hanoi. But they only make small talk, as though they’re waiting for someone more.

Playmaker, she realises. They must be waiting for Playmaker.

And then, finally, another car comes. A small family step out: a boy in the same uniform as Zaizen Aoi and Homura Takeru, and a middle-aged couple who are likely his parents. Kusanagi Shoichi is the first to envelop the boy in a hug, and then Homura Takeru, and between all of that Hayami is able to guess this is Playmaker.

She’d known from quite early on that Playmaker was young – and so was Blue Angel – of course, but seeing all of them gathered together just hammered it in.

And she’s flattered they all trust her and want her here as well. As much as she’s been involved, it’s been on the flipside: through the safety of a computer screen. Most of the people here won’t know her, or know her by role only. But she can say the same about most of them.

They settle quickly enough, for all that a good number are bursting with questions. Playmaker is quiet, though. That probably helps. And Akira is looking over them all.

She sits with him, of course. Aoi sits on his other side. The bounty hunters and Spectre join them, and Playmaker sits with his parents, Homura and Kusanagi at another cluster of tables. There’s coffee waiting, and hot dogs. She takes a sip of the coffee when no-body moves, or speaks.

“It’s good,” she says, and gulps the rest down. It doesn’t taste like the usual instant coffee she finds from street vendors… or outside the pod machine in the SOL Technologies staff room.

Kusanagi grins. “It is my life’s work,” he replies. “Also, there’s a blanket free coffee for life for saving Link VRAINS in effect, though I usually charge for the hotdogs and chips.”

Usually so he’s not charging this time, she gathers? Though it doesn’t matter, she thinks. Between the adults here, they have more than enough revenue to cover the cost for the children even if it had been a five star restaurant instead of a hot dog truck.

The hot dogs are good as well: not burnt to a crisp and with a generous amount of onions and sauce to pick from.

“Eat up,” Kusanagi says, when no-one follows her lead.

Akira pours himself a cup of coffee. Aoi picks up a hot dog as well.

Finally, they let go of the silent awkwardness that filled the air. Conversations start up. The seating arrangements shuffle around. Somehow, she winds up sitting with Go’s manager and Playmaker’s – Fujiki Yuusaku’s – parents discussing possibilities for introducing other gaming methods into Link VRAINS, and making it a place for more than just pair fights, competitive duellists and the Ignis battlefield.

“Dungeon Dice Monsters, huh,” she says, as Playmaker’s father takes a tablet out of bag and pulls up the relevant items. It uses the monsters in duel monsters, she realises, with different rules and a different board. Theoretically, more than two people can play. And it will give the local game shops more business as well, especially since the old duel disks are getting phased out and many people would rather pay extra money for specific card data from SOL Technologies than physical cards from Industrial Illusions.

But the old SOL Technologies was more than happy to crush their opposition. Akira wants to work together with them, will keeping the convenience of the network they’ve enjoyed for so long.

And Akira has already expressed his own interest, and left her to work out the particulars. And though she can’t hear the conversation on the other tables all too well, she’ll manage just fine here she thinks. She can duel herself, after all. It’s one of the requirements to working at SOL Technologies. She just doesn’t do it very often; doesn’t get the opportunities, or the time. She can programme somewhat as well; again, she needs to be able to, to look over the work from other departments. She wouldn’t have climbed so far up the ladder without it, no matter what others had to say about the circumstances.

And now, she looks at the board games he offers. Dungoen Dice Monsters would be the sensible starting point, given the monsters are familiar to duellists and the game mechanics foreign enough to duellists and non-duellists alike. But it had phased out of popularity quite quickly in the old days, when Kaiba Corporation had churned out one duel disk model after another. Eventually, solid vision became mainstream, and after that Link VRAINS when the security issues shut down the mechanism, but in all the development geared towards Duel Monsters, other games had fallen to the wayside.

It’s a shame, she thinks. Duel Monsters is a one-on-one duel and it’s seen far too many battlegrounds. The idea of having more variety in the new Link VRAINS is a good one, she thinks. Especially when she thinks of how many people have faced tragedy at the hands of duel monsters. Like Playmaker who’s wearing an old duel disk model with no cards in the holder. Like Kusanagi’s brother who’s hidden away in their shared apartment.

But Dungeon Dice Monsters exists as only a board game, at current. They’ll need to convert the programming. Include all the new monsters that have appeared over the years. Expand the board for multiple players. Secure the rights for modifying the game, first of all. But this is her job. She can see the possibilities, work out who is needed and where, and where to even begin.

“Dungeon Dice Monsters is a good middle-ground,” she says. “Though I hope others agree to that.”

Playmaker’s parents smile at her. “You have an expression,” the mother says, “that says you’re going to make it happen either way.”

She grins back, and it’s true, she thinks. She saw Akira to the top of SOL Technologies, and now he can make it the sort of place he wants and she’ll support him. And here is the next step, if he wants her to manage and further SOL Technologies while they handle the battlefield. And she’s been the backup but never on the front lines, against the Ignis. She’s remained safe, in the office, while others fought in Link VRAINS, or awake on the aeroplane looking after their sleeping bodies while they fought in the network, but she’s watched over it all. But that’s been her role all this time, and the company is a weapon they can’t afford to let rust when chasing the Ignis down.

She doesn’t mind her role though; in fact, she revels in it. If he trusts her to do that, she won’t betray his trust.


End file.
